(Brussels circa 1615/17–1686 Vienna)
Mary Magdalen with an Angel in a cartouche, surrounded by a floral wreath,
indistinctly signed and dated,
oil on canvas, 124 x 103 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, France, 2020

We are grateful to Fred Meijer for confirming the attribution of the present painting to Johannes Antonius van der Baren on the basis of photographs.

The present floral wreath, with its abundance of blooms, from exotic tulips to roses, irises and forget-me-nots, encircling a carved cartouche, within which sits the Mary Magdalene being fed mana from heaven, is a shining example of the Flemish Baroque. The refined still-lifes are from the hand of Jan Anton van den Baren, with the central figures by an accomplished, but as yet unidentified, hand. Van den Baren worked first in Brussels, where he collaborated with Erasmus Quellinus II for the figures in his works, before moving with Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, his patron, to Vienna in 1656, where he instead worked with fellow Flemish émigré painter Nikolaus van Hoy. However, the authorship of the female saint and cherubic angel in the present work remains an open art historical question. The iconography relates to a medieval legend of the Magdalene’s fast in the desert, when she was kept alive by mana from heaven, here shown by the angel proffering her a basket of divine sustenance. Van den Baren’s arrangement of flowers would have delighted connoisseurs in both Flanders and in Vienna, where the impossibility of their all blooming at the same time of year would have been understood as a further statement of the wonder and beauty of the divine.

In addition to the brilliance of his handling of still-lifes Van den Baren played an important art historical role as Director of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s Picture Gallery in Vienna, then one of the greatest collections in the world and the core of what was to become the present collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Van der Baren compiled an inventory of the collection in 1659, and his predecessor as Director of the Archduke’s Picture Gallery (when it was still housed in Flanders), David Teniers, depicted van der Baren (third from right) in his celebrated Archduke Leopold Willem in his gallery at Brussels, conserved at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. no. GG 79).