Musicians and dancing figures in an ideal landscape with ruins and buildings beyond,
oil on canvas, 98 x 136 cm, framed

The present painting is the pendant to lot 240 and it was attributed by Giuliano Briganti to the Dutch painter Dirk Theodor Helmbreker (1636–1696), who was active in Rome during the latter half of the seventeenth century (written communication, in copy).

This painting represents an animated folk festival with an idealised landscape background with ancient ruins. The various scenes depicted seem to allude to an allegorical meaning. Indeed, a man on the left can be seen holding up an hourglass alluding to time, and beyond him, the female figure in the middle-distance climbing a stepped wall, holds a book in one hand and points the way to a man seated beside her. This figure appears to allude to Virtue, who seeks to distance man from the earthly pleasures identifiable in the foreground scenes with musicians on the left, people dancing at the centre and those banqueting on the right, as well as the card players in the distance.

The present painting is close to other examples of Helmbreker’s paintings executed in Rome such as the four Market scenes in the Galleria Colonna (see D. Frascarelli, «Favole non favole»: i mercati di Theodor Helmbreker nelle collezioni romane e fiorentine della seconda metà del ‘600, in: Storia dell’arte, 116-117, 2007, pp. 130-131).