Lot 2: Nicolaas Liemakere, called Nicolaas Roose (Ghent 1600/01-1646)

Nicolaas Liemakere, called Nicolaas Roose (Ghent 1600/01-1646)
The Ship of the Argonauts
with inscription 'Caligari' and numbered '4009'
black chalk, brown wash heightened with white on light brown prepared paper, partly incised
14½ x 10 5/8 in. (369 x 272 mm.)

Williamstown, The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, and elsewhere, Master Drawings from the Collection of Ingrid and Julius S. Held, 1977.

Count Moriz von Fries (L. 2903).
J. Scholz (L. 2933b).

The drawing and the print are after a painting which decorated the Arch of Ferdinand made for the triumphal entry of the new governor of Ghent, Cardinal Infante Ferdinand in 1635. The governor came from Spain, and the classical subject of the Ship of the Argonauts alludes to the governor's sea voyage. The painting is in the Bijloke Museum, Ghent.

Liemakere executed a dozen paintings for Cardinal Infante Ferdinand's entry into Ghent.

Two other drawings related to paintings made for the triumphal entry are extant. The first, Ferdinand crossing the Alps is at the Albertina, Vienna and the second, The Prayer of Belgica, after a now-lost painting by Gerard Seghers is at the National Gallery of Art, Scotland.