Lot 11: JACOB WILLEMSZ. DE WET (HAARLEM C. 1610-C. 1691) St Paul and St Barnabas at Lystra,

JACOB WILLEMSZ. DE WET (HAARLEM C. 1610-C. 1691) St Paul and St Barnabas at Lystra, Oil on panel, 45 by 59 cm.
Provenance: Olmade Collection (Bryan Collection), Paris, 1888, B-350.

Exhibited: The New York Historical Society, New York, 1915, no. B-350 (as Leonard Bramer).

Literature: H. Weichmann, Leonard Bramer: sein Leben und seine Kunst , Leipzig 1923, p. 208 (as incorrectly attributed to Bramer).

Jacob Willemsz. de Wet painted several versions of St Paul and St Barnabas at Lystra . Many artists of the same period, who were heavily influenced by Rembrandt, painted this subject matter with a comparable technique. Due to these similarities the present lot was exhibited as by Leonard Bramer (1596-1674) in the New York Historical Society in 1915.

The illustrated scene is a passage from the Bible concerning the preaching of St Paul and St Barnabas at Lystra, today in Southern Turkey. Among the crowd there was a lame man who was ordered by St Paul to stand up on his feet and walk, and so he did. The pagans of Lystra, having witnessed the miraculous cure, hailed St Paul and St Barnabas as Jupiter and Mercury. They brought an ox as a sacrifice, which is seen on the left side of the composition. The two apostles, who are standing behind the young girl holding a candle in the centre of the composition, are trying to persuade the crowd to stop the sacrifice.