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Lot 751
Avont, Pieter van (Kreis/Circle)
Estimated Value:
4.000 € - 6.000 €
Result:
incl. Premium and VAT
Description:
Mechelen 1600 - Deurne (Antwerpen) 165222 x 17 cm, o.R.
The Holy Family with the John the Baptist as a boy. Oil/copper
Collection Ferdinand III Mülhens, Cologne.
Not in Ursula Härting, Frans Francken the Younger (1581-1642). Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Freren 1989.
Expert report: Dr. Ursula Härting, Sept. 2023.
The small copper plate (not signed) has always been considered in the Mülhens collection to be a work by the younger Frans Francken. After viewing the original, Ursula Härting has rejected this attribution.
The copper panel of the Holy Family with St. John shown above belongs to a group of similar painted compositions, all of which can be found under the attribution to the Flemish painter Pieter van Avont, his pupils or his successors. The present panel is the most qualitative among them. It is certainly an anonymous Flemish painter. The view into the depths of the picture is in the typical greenish, bluish colours of Antwerp landscape painting. The Child Jesus lies in Mary's lap, a lesser-known motif. The basket with a white bag could be a reference to the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt. Perhaps she is resting in the shade of the large tree in which sits a bullfinch with a bright red belly, its red reminding viewers of the time of Christ's bloody martyrdom. The Lamb of God peeps out from under Mary's blue robe, right next to a stone that is supposed to remind the viewer allegorically of Christ on the cold stone. This is again a specifically Flemish motif that has been known since the 16th century from devotional literature in the Southern Netherlands.
Characteristic of van Avont's many depictions of the Holy Family are accompanying groups of angels, which are absent here and whose absence can be observed only in the group with the same composition attributed to him. Whether such a prototype by van Avont ever existed can currently neither be proven nor excluded. Whether it already exists in this high-quality representation on copper must remain open.
We are grateful to Dr. Ursula Härting for valuable information.
