(Malines 1576–1632 Amsterdam)
An extensive wooded landscape with biblical staffage,
oil on canvas, 111 x 170 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Germany

We are grateful to Klaus Ertz for confirming the attribution of the present painting to David Vinckboons. A written certificate (March 2019) is available. He dates it in the early years of the artist, circa 1605.

David Vinckboons’ painted oeuvre, for which the first catalogue was compiled by Korneel Goossens in 1954 and for which K. Ertz and C. Nitze-Ertz published a new one in 2016, consists mostly of histories and genre scenes in landscape settings. The style, composition and light heartedness of these works recall Flemish painting of the 16th century, albeit in a less overtly moralising manner.

The present composition with its turbaned figure in the foreground may allude to a biblical setting. The figure is shown leading a small boy and the presence of a flock of lambs, with their sacrificial connotations, may allude to The Binding of Isaac.

David Vinckboons was born into a family of artists in Malines in 1576. His grandfather Gillis had settled there in 1489 and had opened a studio of painting in watercolour on canvas – a Malines specialty continued by his son Philip (1545–1601). Due to the political and religious situation of the day, Philip moved his business to Antwerp in 1579, where he is recorded from 1580 until 1586. As the situation deteriorated for the reformed community to which the Vinckboons belonged, in late 1586 Philip travelled to the North with 185 other Antwerp families under safe conduct granted by the Duke of Leicester. Here he first settled in Middelburg and from 1591 in Amsterdam. With other religious immigrants from the South, such as Gillis van Coninxloo and Hans Bol, the Vinckboons family formed a tight artistic community in Amsterdam and continued their businesses as before. Thus David received his training from his father and first specialised in paintings in watercolour on canvas, such as his forebears had done. Later he took up painting in oil, mostly on smaller formats, which Karel van Mander praises as having considerable merit. His compositions must have been popular since they were frequently engraved.