(Antwerp 1567-1617 Amsterdam)
An architectural capriccio with a view of an imaginary classical palace and elegant figures,
oil on canvas, 97 x 180 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Belgium

We are grateful to Heiner Borggrefe for confirming the attribution on the basis of a high-resolution photograph. He believes the figures to be possibly by Pieter Isaacsz. (Elsinore 1566–1625).

The present inventive and decorous capriccio is an enduring testament to the transformative impact of the Vredeman de Vries dynasty on the Northern Renaissance. In the current canvas, Paul Vredeman de Vries depicts stately marble colonnades, articulated by delicate shadows, contrapposto statues in niches, vaulted ceilings with grotesque decorations and an accomplished employment of mathematical perspective, redolent of both his father Hans Vredeman de Vries’s (1527–1607) popular oeuvre and hugely influential publication on the subject, Perspective (Leiden, 1604).

Borggrefe, an expert on Northern Mannerist and architectural painting, at the Weserrenaissance-Museum Schloß Brake, Lemgo, which is itself built in the style of Vredeman de Vries’s designs, and co-curator of an exhibition on the artist’s father (see Tussen Stadspaleizen en Luchtkastelen. Hans Vredeman de Vries en de Renaissance, ed. by V.H. Vredeman/H. Borggrefe/T. Fusenig/B. Uppenkamp, exhibition catalogue, Ghent 2002), notes the handling of the figures as characteristic of Pieter Isaacsz. Born on Zealand to a father from Haarlem active at the royal court at Kronborg castle, the Danish rival to Fontainebleau and immortalised as the setting for Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Isaacsz. trained in Amsterdam under Cornelis Ketel and Hans von Aachen. Isaacsz. was celebrated for the narrative diversity of his multi-figured compositions, as may be seen in the present work.