(Antwerp 1597–1655)
Judith and Holofernes,
oil on copper, 32 x 25 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, France

We are grateful to Bert Schepers of the Centrum Rubenianum, Antwerp, for suggesting the attribution to Cornelis Schut on the basis of a photograph and for his kind assistance in cataloguing the present lot.

The current copper depicting the Jewish heroine Judith, drawing the sword of the sleeping Assyrian General Holofernes in order to behead him, set beneath a tent awning supported by putti and accompanied by Judith’s maidservant, is a newly attributed work by Cornelis Schut. The present work is known from two prints. The first is an undated etching, in reverse of the painting, which is signed ‘CSchut’ and may have been etched by Schut himself, and secondly through an engraving, which shares the scheme of the present work, by Jan Witdoeck, published by Johannes Meyssens in Antwerp in 1633, and which identifies Schut as the inventor of the composition: ‘Cor Schut invenit’. In the present picture, the delicate handling of the flesh of the sleeping Holofernes and the wizened face of the maidservant, along with the rapidly executed drapery of the figures, all point to a dating soon after Schut’s return from Italy, around 1616.

Presumed to have been a pupil of Rubens, Cornelis Schut stayed with the Flemish sculptor and fellow Rubens disciple, François Duquesnoy in Rome, where he exerted an influence on the early compositions of the young Nicholas Poussin, before settling back in Antwerp where he became a master of the Guild of Saint Luke there in 1618.