(Antwerp 1525–1590)
An Allegory of Spring,
oil on panel, 71 x 70 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Brussels

The present roundel is an important addition to the varied and inventive oeuvre of the Antwerp landscapist Jacob Grimmer (1525–1590). The courtly couples processing through a formal garden, with verdant trees to one side and a renaissance palace to the other, enlivened by music making and birds migrating, are typical of the artist’s other tondi format treatments of Allegories of Spring, such as the picture formerly in the collection of the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio (oil on panel, 75.5 x 75.5 cm), and another (oil on panel, 77.7 x 76.7 cm) sold at Christie’s London, 24 April 2009, lot 22.

The convincing stylistic similarities between the gay poses of the figures in all three works and the overall compositional scheme would suggest an execution date for the present work in the 1580s, late in Grimmer’s career, and when the market for such works among the erudite and discerning collectors of Antwerp had been well established.

Reine de Bertier de Sauvigny, author of the monograph on the artist, suggests the figures in the tondo formerly in Dayton may be the work of Marten van Cleve (1520–1570), and points to figures in other seasonal allegories as redolent of the handling of Gillis Mostaert (1528–1598). Two-handed pictures, where landscapists such as Grimmer employed specialist staffage painters were immensely popular in Flanders, and in the present work the refined personages celebrating the advent of Spring may indeed be the work of another accomplished Antwerp painter.