(Siegen 1577–1640 Antwerp)
The Christ Child and the Infant John the Baptist in a Landscape,
oil on canvas, 125 x 158 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Baron Franz Josef von Zandt (died in 1951), Seehof Palace near Bamberg;
Collection of Peter Wirth, Zurich;
Austrian private collection

In 1982, Julius Held, the acclaimed Rubens expert, wrote to the then-owner of the painting: “I believe that the best version (of this composition) that has come down to us is the one at present in the reserve of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. This picture was formerly exhibited at Schleissheim Castle… . While the Munich picture, as I said, is the best version known to me, and indeed in my opinion is a work of Rubens himself (though in Munich it is listed at present as coming from the Rubens School), your painting comes very close to it in quality and is certainly the best version after the Munich one known to me. I am very confident that Rubens must have had a hand in it, not only in the beautiful figure of the Infant Christ, but also in the brilliantly painted landscape. The brushwork throughout is forceful and spontaneous, the impasto – particularly in the trees and sky – of a solidity known to me only from originals by the master, never found in copies….” The lost original of this composition by Rubens’s own hand were formerly in the collection of the Genoese patrician family Balbi.

Another version, sold in these rooms at Dorotheum in 2011, likewise came from Genoa, where it belonged to the Spinola family. In 1982, Held wrote that seven versions of this composition were known to him (including the present painting). In addition, he mentioned a woodcut by Christoffel Jegher and further prints, which may have served as models for many a weaker copy. The lost original from the Palazzo Balbi in Genoa was dated to around 1628 by Michael Jaffé (cf. M. Jaffé, Rubens, Catalogo Completo, Milan 1989, p. 306, no. 914). Jaffé mentions another replica by the workshop, which was once preserved in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and after 1928 figured in a Berlin private collection. Among the numerous repetitions of this popular composition, the present painting is one of most superior in terms of quality that were painted in the workshop of Rubens with the participation of the master. The present painting probably formed part of the collection of the prince bishops of Bamberg, whose summer residence was Seehof Palace, as early as the 18th century. After the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg was closed down in the course of secularization, the palace came into the possession of the House of Wittelsbach. In 1841, it was sold to Baron of Zandt, in whose family it remained until 1951. Today Seehof is owned by the Free State of Bavaria.

For the present painting exists an extensive technological certificate compiled by Professor Franz Mairinger (1991), former head of the Department of Conservation and Restoration at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He writes: “In summary, it can be said that the technological findings speak in favour of a period of execution in the first half of the 17th century and that nothing questions the above attribution (to the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens) in terms of material and painting technique…”.

Professor Hans Vlieghe believes the painting to be a product from the workshop of Rubens on the basis of a digital photograph.