(Hemixem/Antwerp c. 1500–after 1563 Haarlem), workshop of
The Prodigal Son in the Tavern (St. Luke, 15:11–16), oil on panel, 84 x 114 cm, framed

Provenance: Private Collection, Switzerland.

The fully autograph first version of this composition, slightly modified, is preserved in the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe. A German art historian comments on the latter work as follows: “The scenes of small figures in the background of the composition are to be understood as commentaries relating to the protagonists in the foreground; they elucidate the gesture of penitence of the Prodigal Son, who sits at the table in the company of morally objectionable female figures…” In 1519 Jan Sanders van Hemessen became apprenticed to Hendrick van Cleve in Amsterdam. In 1524 he was admitted to the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp as a free master and in 1548 became the guild’s chairman. With his compositions of half-length figures, he continued the tradition of moralizing genre painting established by Quentin Massys, who reinvented Flemish figure painting in the 16th century. F. Winkler about Hemessen in Thieme-Becker: “Among the Antwerp artists of the second quarter of the 16th Century, Hemessen seems to have run the most prolific workshop. Besides the “Master of the Prodigal Son”, he was the town’s most important figure painter during that period working in the grand style that had been introduced by the Romanist movement spreading since the beginning of the century. He became active at a time when Netherlandish painters were not yet able to cope with the monumental style practiced by the Italians… In terms of development, his relevance can hardly be overestimated. His major accomplishment was to give genre painting its Roman influence, so that he became the originator of Flemish, not Dutch, 17th Century genre painting…” This painting is probably identical with one of the two versions of the Karlsruhe painting (comp. B. Wallen, Jan Sanders van Hemessen, Ann Arbor 1983, Nr 19a+b).

Provenance: Private Collection, Switzerland. The fully autograph first version of this composition, slightly modified, is preserved in the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe. A German art historian comments on the latter work as follows: “The scenes of