Lot 78: HENDRICK DE CLERCK (Brussels c.1570-c.1629)

The Continence of Scipio oil on canvas 613/8 x 1023/8 in. (156 x 260 cm.) NOTES Flemish art in the decades prior to the emergence of Rubens and van Dyck is usually described as conservative, in comparison with the flowering of late Mannerism in the northern Netherlands, especially in Haarlem. Yet the variety and eclecticism of the late 16th- and early 17th-century art of Antwerp and Brussels reflect a vigorous artistic establishment employed in producing cabinet paintings for a wealthy bourgeousie, portraiture, mythological scenes and history paintings for sophisticated court and Humanist circles and devotional works for the refurbishment of churches that had suffered considerable destruction between 1579 and 1584 when the capital was in Calvinist hands. Following his probable training with Maerten de Vos (1532-c.1593) in Antwerp (it has also been suggested that he was apprenticed to Joos van Winghe in Italy), de Clerck spent most of his career in Brussels where he was appointed court painter to the Archduke Ernest in 1594. In 1596, after the Archduke's death, his brother Emperor Rudolf II arranged for de Clerck to stay on as court painter in the service of the new Archdukes, Albert and Isabella. Much of his religious production of this and the following decades was for churches in the Brussels area where a number of his paintings still remain. It is extremely difficult to date de Clerck's paintings as his style changed little. However, in the 1590s he produced elaborate, large-scale compositions of devotional subjects, such as the altarpiece for the church of N“tre-Dame de la Chapelle, The Family of the Virgin (Mus‚es Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels), with which the present canvas may be compared. De Clerck's surviving oeuvre includes both large-scale religious and history paintings as well as small easel or cabinet paintings in a highly decorative Mannerist style, sometimes in collaboration with other painters, notably Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) and Denis van Alsloot (1599-c. 1628). In his late religious work, for example The Descent from the Cross of 1628, painted for the collegiate foundation at Anderlecht, he remained true to the forms of his youth in spite of the swift developments which had taken place around him. SALESROOM NOTICE WITHDRAWN.