(German 1575/1580 – after 1623)
Mercenary Love,
monogrammed (ligated) and dated, upper center: CGA 1623,
oil on canvas, 95 x 114 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Christie’s, London, 11 December 1987, lot 23 (as Hans von Aachen);
sale, Ader-Picard-Tajan, Paris, 9 April 1991, lot 16 (as Christoph Gertner);
with Galerie Neuse, Bremen (according to literature);
Private European collection

Literature:
J. Jacoby, Hans von Aachen. 1552–1615, Munich/Berlin 2000, cited under cat. no. 63, p. 207, not illustrated (as Christoph Gertner);
J. Zimmer, in: Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon, vol. 52, Munich/Leipzig 2006, p. 307, not illustrated (as Christoph Gertner)

The subject of matchmaking is a recurrent theme in North European painting. In the present painting the notion of a transaction is implicit and the painting appears to be an allegory of mercenary love. On the table are coins and wine which are emblematic of vice.

The present work relates to a composition by Hans von Aachen which is known in two versions, both on panel: one of which is signed and conserved in the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe (inv. no. 162); and the other is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. 1129; see T. DaCosta Kauffmann, L’école de Prague. La peinture a la cour de Rodolphe II, Paris 1985, pp. 192–93). However, both paintings by von Aachen show a banquet taking place in a vaulted chamber in the upper right of the compostion, and also differ in details, such as the absence of playing cards, which are present in the KHM version and are here replaced by carnations, a symbol of marriage.

Christoph Gertner was probably born in Arnstadt, Thuringia, which is suggested by the letter ‘A’ bound into the monogram he commonly used: ‘CGA’ (see J. Zimmer in literature). It is assumed that he was in Prague, at the court of Rudolf II, around 1600. By 1604 he was court painter to Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, until 1621 when he left to work for the Protestant Archbishop of Brandenburg. Most of Gertner’s works are still in various institutions in the German city of Wolfenbüttel.