Lot 218: * MARTEN VAN VALCKENBORCH I LEUVEN 1534 - 1612 FRANKFURT AM MAIN

27 by 38 1/2 in.; 68.6 by 97.8 cm.

oil on panel

A. Wied, in Der Turmbau zu Babel, exhibition catalogue, Vienna/Graz 2003, vol. I, p. 76, reproduced (as Attributed to Marten van Valckenborch)

Born in Louvain, Marten van Valckenborch, the older brother of Lukas van Valckenborch (1535-1597), enrolled in the painters' guild in Mechlen August 13, 1559. He moved to Antwerp in 1564 and after the iconoclasm of 1566, he fled to Aachen for political and religious reasons. He returned to Antwerp in 1575-76, but in 1585 when the Spanish troops conquered the area south of the Meuse, he fled again, this time to Frankfurt am Main, a more tolerant German Imperial city. There, he and his brother ran a flourishing workshop. He died in Frankfurt in January 1612.

The figures in the foreground of the present work are painted by another hand, possibly by Jan Brueghel, the Elder or his workshop. They appear to be by the same hand as the staffage in another Tower of Babel, ascribed to Tobias Verhaecht, in the Koninklijk Museum voor Kunsten in Antwerp. Other known versions of the Tower of Babel by Marten van Valckenborch are in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden and in Gaesbeek Castle, Dresden.