(Antwerp 1532–1603)
Christ Triumphant over Sin and Death,
oil on panel, 100.5 x 76.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection

We are grateful to Luuk Pijl for confirming the attribution of the present painting and for his help in cataloguing this lot. His written communication is available.

The painting is a welcome addition to the oeuvre of Marten de Vos, dating to the artist’s mature period, somewhere during the 1580s.

The composition is dominated by a rather muscular portrayal of Christ trampling on a skull, which lies on a pedestal. Around Him are hovering angels and at the lower right are Saint Peter and Saint Paul with their typical attributes. At the lower left a summery hilly landscape is depicted. Further angels and saints frame the rising figure of Christ.

The subject had a certain popularity among sixteenth and seventeenth century Flemish painters. Best known is Rubens’s rendition of the subject, made around 1618, today in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Strasbourg (inv. no. MBA 235).

Marten de Vos was – together with the brothers Ambrosius Francken I and Frans Francken I – the leading history painter in Flanders after the dominant Frans Floris. Not only a painter, de Vos was also a prolific draughtsman who made numerous designs for Antwerp printers as well as designers of tapestries and stained glass windows. The youngest son of Anna de Heere and Peter de Vos, who originated from Leiden, the young de Vos became a pupil, at 17 years old, of the unknown Jeroom Scuelens. Shortly after he travelled to Italy where he resided from 1550 to about 1558, possibly in the company of Pieter Brueghel the Elder. According to the painter and biographer Carlo Ridolfi, Marten De Vos worked in the Venetian studio of Tintoretto (see C. Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell’Arte, 1648).

After his stay in Italy he married Joanna le Boucq, whose family was originally from Valenciennes in France. The couple had five daughters and three sons. At the time, Frans Floris was the leading history painter in Flanders, but despite the powerful presence of Floris and his well-run workshop, De Vos managed to secure important commissions from 1564 onwards. Nevertheless, De Vos ran a well-organised studio with many pupils, among them two of his sons. In 1572–73 De Vos was appointed the dean of the Antwerp guild.