(Antwerp circa 1535/40–1589)
A river landscape with two patriarchs near a town,
signed with monogram and dated lower right: CM 1572,
oil on panel, 40.5 x 59.4 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Spain;
Collection J. Nyssen-Wiegand, Barcelona;
Collection Studer, Vaduz;
with Galerie Friederike Pallamar, Vienna (as Jacob Grimmer)

Literature:
E. Greindl, Jacob Grimmer, Vienna 1972, no. 5, pp. 10, 11, 17, pl. 3;
R. de Berthier de Sauvigny, Jacob et Abel Grimmer, Brussels 1991, p. 59, no. XI, p. 61, fig. 4 (as Jacob Grimmer)

We are grateful to Vadim Sadkov of the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, for confirming the attribution of the present painting to Cornelis Molenaer on the basis of high-resolution photographs.

According to Karel van Mander, his contemporaries called the Antwerp-based landscape painter Cornelis Molenaer ‘Scheele Neel’ (‘cross-eyed Neel’, see K. van Mander, Schilderboek, Haarlem 1604, fols. 157–159). The artist is known to have collaborated with such contemporaries as Gillis Coignet and Gillis Mostaert. Only a few works by the master are known today, all depicting large landscapes with biblical scenes. The present painting can be compared to Molenaer’s Wooded Landscape with the Good Samaritan (1580, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin).