24 December 2018
Happy Christmas and New Year from JVDPPP!
The JVDPPP team wish all our readers a very happy Christmas and New Year 2019.
Anthony Van Dyck, ‘Die Heilige Familie mit tanzenden Engeln’, oil on panel, 32 x 40 cm, Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen (inv. no. GK129), on permanent loan from the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, cat. no. 790A) since 1884, by kind permission, photo by Ulrike Villwock
This panel was one of the last examined by the Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project in 2018, the 187thout of the 196 examined so far (1). It is Van Dyck’s preparatory oil sketch for the painting in the State Hermitage Museum which was once owned by Sir Robert Walpole, first Prime Minister of Great Britain, and was bought from his grandson by Empress Catherine the Great of Russia along with many other outstanding Van Dyck’s (2).
Anthony Van Dyck, ‘The Rest on the Flight into Egypt’, oil on canvas, 215 x 285.5 cm, State Hermitage Museum, inv. no. GE 539
On the front of the sketch there is a partial thumb print in the paint which may possibly be Van Dyck’s. It complements the two finger prints we have found so far. The panel was made by the Antwerp panel maker identified as Michiel Claessens (active from 1590 until his death in 1637) and his clover leaf mark was punched on the reverse. The analysis of the age of the wood and possible matches to other panels the project has examined is ongoing. The results will be revealed on the website.
Partial thumb print (left) and the mark of Michiel Claessens (right)
Justin Davies
How to cite: Davies, Justin. “Happy Christmas and New Year from JVDPPP!” In Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project.
jordaensvandyck.org/happy-christmas-and-new-year-2019/(accessed 22 December 2024)
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(1) Susan J. Barnes, Nora de Poorter, Oliver Millar, Horst Vey, Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, Yale University Press, 2004, III. 7, p. 251 (ill.); Peter van den Brink and Wibke Vera Birth, Gestatten Suermondt! Sammler Kenner Kunstmäzen, Belser, 2018, pp. 182-5
(2)Natalya Gritsay and Natalya Babina, Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Painting, State Hermitage Museum Catalogue, Hermitage Publishing House in association with Yale University Press, 2008, No. 104, pp. 70-74 (ill.), for a detailed discussion on the Hermitage painting. It was titled as ‘The Madonna and Child with a Dance of Angels’ in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature. It is now titled ‘The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (The Madonna with the Partridges)’.