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Lot Essay
Sweerts was one of the most fascinating, if enigmatic, of all 17th
century artists. Nothing is known of his early years, his formal
education, his teacher and artistic training, indeed even his
whereabouts are unknown before 1646, when he is recorded as living in Rome. In 1656 he is documented in Brussels, and in 1658 he moved to Amsterdam, before departing for the island of Goa in the East Indies as a lay member of the French order of missionaries. He was not to return, and died there in 1664.
The present painting is first recorded in an 1808 inventory of paintings belonging to Antonio Widmann, along with a second painting An Artist's Studio, signed and dated 1652, now in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Antonio Widmann, descended from a family who in the seventeenth century had close contacts with the Pamphili and in particular Sweert's great Roman patron, the nephew of Pope Innocent X, Prince Camillo Pamphili. Part of Widmann's art collection was inherited through his uncle Abbondio Rezzonico, the nephew of Pope Clement XIII, which may account for a notation in the 1827 sale catalogue that both pictures had come from the collection of Cardinal Rezzonico.
Both paintings are of a similar size, but are of markedly different subjects. It is possible that they were not conceived as a pair but simply linked by a later owner, although Peter Sutton, in his catalogue entry for the 2002 exhibition (op. cit.) speculated that perhaps the artist was seeking to contrast the high and the low: the refined studio, frequented by connoisseurs, as opposed to a simple domestic scene.
century artists. Nothing is known of his early years, his formal
education, his teacher and artistic training, indeed even his
whereabouts are unknown before 1646, when he is recorded as living in Rome. In 1656 he is documented in Brussels, and in 1658 he moved to Amsterdam, before departing for the island of Goa in the East Indies as a lay member of the French order of missionaries. He was not to return, and died there in 1664.
The present painting is first recorded in an 1808 inventory of paintings belonging to Antonio Widmann, along with a second painting An Artist's Studio, signed and dated 1652, now in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Antonio Widmann, descended from a family who in the seventeenth century had close contacts with the Pamphili and in particular Sweert's great Roman patron, the nephew of Pope Innocent X, Prince Camillo Pamphili. Part of Widmann's art collection was inherited through his uncle Abbondio Rezzonico, the nephew of Pope Clement XIII, which may account for a notation in the 1827 sale catalogue that both pictures had come from the collection of Cardinal Rezzonico.
Both paintings are of a similar size, but are of markedly different subjects. It is possible that they were not conceived as a pair but simply linked by a later owner, although Peter Sutton, in his catalogue entry for the 2002 exhibition (op. cit.) speculated that perhaps the artist was seeking to contrast the high and the low: the refined studio, frequented by connoisseurs, as opposed to a simple domestic scene.