(Antwerp 1708–1776) Noli Me Tangere, oil on copper, 33 x 27 cm, framed,

Provenance: Henry Arundell, 8th Baron Arundell of Wardour, New Wardour Castle/Wiltshire (before 1776); John Francis Arundell, 16th and last Baron Arundell of Wardour (Arundell Heirlooms, inv. no. 230); sale, Christie‘s, London, 30 Oct. 1981, lot 12; English private collection.

We are grateful to Dr. Ursula Härting for identifying the present painting as a work by Balthasar Beschey (certificate, February 2010). We also thank Jan Kosten, RKD, The Hague, who endorsed this picture as an authentic work of high quality by Beschey. Balthasar Beschey is the most well-known and significant artist among five brothers, all of whom were painters. In his first years in Antwerp, his preferred subjects were landscapes in the Brueghels‘ tradition; subsequently he took to religious and history painting, still under the influence of his great Antwerp models. In these genres, he created independent compositions, delicate and smooth in execution, which established his reputation as one of the most important painters in Antwerp in the early eighteenth century. He was elected chairman of the Guild of St Luke and was appointed director of the Academy. The present picture reveals Beschey‘s technical virtuosity and testifies to his high standing in eighteenth-century Flemish painting. As to the painting‘s provenance, it figured in the famous collection of Lord Arundell, who, in the 1770s, had New Wardour Castle in Wiltshire furnished by Giacomo Quarenghi. The picture seems to have adorned the collector‘s study (comp. J. Britton, The Beauties of Wiltshire, vol. I, London 1801, chapter 12A: „Two small pieces, delicately painted, of our saviour appearing to Mary after the resurrection...“).

Certificate: Dr. Klaus Ertz (January 2010), as Jan Breughel the Younger.