(Lier 1612–1659 Antwerp)
An Allegory of Sight,
oil on panel, 55.5 x 90 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Gemäldesalon Josef Kuba, Karlsbad, 1935;
sold to Cesare V. Adda (1878-1939);
with Rodolfo Monfredini, 1951;
sold to Artaki Gurijan, Alexandria, Egypt, 1951;
Private collection, Italy;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Klaus Ertz for confirming the attribution to Frans Wouters (private communication, 24 September 2020).

The present painting is part of a series representing the Five Senses, of which An Allegory of Taste and An Allegory of Touch are also known. All three paintings have been offered at Dorotheum, Vienna, 19 April 2016, as lots 28-30 (Sight as lot 29). In the past attributed to Jan Brueghel II, all three Allegories are now considered autograph works by the Flemish artist Frans Wouters.

In the present painting, the Allegory of Sight is represented primarily by the woman regarding herself in the mirror, alluding to a deeper level of interpretation – the theme of vanity – also evoked by the still life painting depicted on the right. The variety of precious objects, scientific instruments, paintings and sculptures that enrich the room, which itself becomes a cabinet of wonders, represents the multiplicity of visual perception and man’s desire to take possession of the things he sees by understanding them. The world map in the foreground also serves this end, allowing man to observe and thus know distant worlds. The monkey in the foreground of the painting on the floor on the other hand, represents the lowest, most superficial level of seeing, limited to staring at things without really being able to understand them: the animal uses two pair of spectacles but to no avail. In the painting propped in front of the still life at the bottom right, one can recognise a reference by Wouters to a work, entitled Mars and Rhea Silvia by his master Peter Paul Rubens, today in the Princely Collections of Liechtenstein, Vaduz/Vienna.