(Antwerp 1580–1662)
The Triumph of Venus,
oil on copper, oval, 37 x 54 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, France, until 2020

The present varied and decorous narrative composition by Adriaen van Stalbemt is characteristic of the master’s inventive and classicizing style of the mid-1620s. The gait of the prancing satyrs, the swirling drapery of the goddesses and nymphs and the figural quotation of the Nemean-lion hooded Hercules are redolent of his other works such as the Protectors of the Young Artist conserved in the Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest (oil on panel, 27.5 x 50.6 cm, inv. no. 9838).

Klaus Ertz agrees with Ursula Härting (see K. Ertz, Adriaen van Stalbemt, Lingen 2018, cat. no. 153, p. 322) that the handling of the figures in this period of Stalbemt’s career draw heavily on the models of Hendrick van Balen (1575–1632). The oval format of the present work fits with another Triumph by Stalbemt, with a similarly lively rendering of an antique subject matter, An Allegory of the Triumph of Amor (see Tajan, Paris, 12 June 1995, lot 106, oil on copper, 34 x 49.5 cm).

Cornelis de Bie, wrote of Adriaen van Stalbemt in Het Gulden Cabinet, published in Antwerp 1661, that the artist was born in the city in 1580. However, being Protestant, the family were exiled after the fall of the Calvinist stronghold to Duke of Parma’s troops in 1585. The artist thus likely received his training amongst the painters of Middleburg. In 1609, van Stalbemt returned to Antwerp and the following year was admitted to the Guild of Saint Luke. In 1617 he was elected the guild’s dean. In addition to his activities as specialist landscape painter for several Antwerp masters – which testifies to the great renown he enjoyed along the River Scheldt – the art dealer Peter Goetkint II commissioned from him small copper panels intended for the decoration of cabinets. In 1633, at the invitation of King Charles I, he spent ten months in England. His views of Greenwich with portraits of Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria are still conserved in the British Royal Collection.