(Antwerp circa 1555–1585/90)
The Adoration of the Shepherds,
oil on panel, 107.5 x 76 cm, unframed

Provenance:
Private European collection

We are grateful to Luuk Pijl for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a photograph and for his help in cataloguing the present lot.

Biographical data about Jacob de Backer is very scant, which makes him one of the most mysterious painters of the 16th century. It is assumed that he was born around 1555 and died between 1585 and 1590. He was one of the most important Mannerist masters in Antwerp and occupied a firm position between the generation of Frans Floris and Rubens. He was active during the 1570s and first part of the 1580s. Despite the fact that he is thought to have died early, at about 30 years old, he was very prolific, and an extensive body of work has been attributed to him. The works given to the artist, or his workshop are executed in a late-Mannerist style clearly influenced by Italian models.

Karel van Mander, the indispensable source regarding 16th-century painting, relates in his Schilder-boeck, published in Haarlem in 1604, fols. 231–232, that de Backer was abandoned as a young boy by his father, also a painter, who had to flee Antwerp because of an impending court trial. According to Van Mander the young Jacob de Backer worked in the studio of the painter and picture dealer of Italian origin known as Antonio van Palermo. He later entered the workshop of Hendrick van Steenwijck the Elder. Van Mander claims that Palermo pushed him so hard that the young de Backer died in the arms of his master’s daughter at the age of thirty. As he also indicates this had happened a long time ago, probably before van Steenwijck left Antwerp in 1586. If this is correct it places the time of death of de Backer prior to 1586.

Little is known about his training. Strangely, there is no record of him ever becoming a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke. While his work shows a strong influence of Roman and Florentine Mannerism, in particular the style of Giorgio Vasari, there is no proof that de Backer made a study trip to Italy as did many of his contemporary Flemish artists. His work is furthermore strongly influenced by the multi figured compositions by Frans Floris. Many of his compositions deal with complex allegorical subjects. This has been interpreted as evidence that the artist enjoyed a humanistic education, and his patrons were from Antwerp’s educated class. Unfortunately, none of his pictures mentioned by Karel van Mander in the Schilder-Boeck have been securely identified and no painting or drawing attributed to the master is signed.

Only three known pictures can be traced back by means of provenance to the 16th century. These are two versions of a Last Judgment – one painted for the funerary monument of fellow Antwerp painter Pieter Goetkind and the other for the funerary monument of famous Antwerp printer and publisher Christophe Plantin, who died in 1589. The version currently in the Antwerp Cathedral originates from the Plantin monument. It is now believed that the side wings to this picture were the work of another artist. The version made for the Goetkind monument is possibly the Last Judgement (circa 1583) recently auctioned at Christie’s, New York, 28 January 2015, lot 107 (sold for $ 220,000).

The composition of the present Nativity is known by another version offered at Lempertz, Cologne, 14 November 2015, lot 1427, as one of a pair. The counterpart of the painting in the 2015 sale is a Crucifixion. The art historian Justus Müller Hofstede suggested in 1973 that these two paintings once formed a cycle of five allegorical works by De Backer with scenes from the life of Jesus (Justus Müller Hofstede, Jacques de Backer. Ein Vertreter der Florentinish-Römischen Maniera in Antwerpen, in: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, 35, 1973, p. 254, note 1). Today no other painting from the cycle is extant. The present painting is, especially in execution of the clothes and in the rendition of the anatomical features, superior compared to the related version offered in 2015. Therefore, it must predate the Cologne version. We might assume that the present Nativity also originated from a series of five works and that the other four paintings are lost today. A date around 1575 seems feasible for the present work, but since there is no clear insight of De Backer’s stylistic development this remains speculative.