Lot 37: HENDRIK DE CLERCK BRUSSELS BEFORE 1570 - 1630

bears signature, lower right, in brown ink: H. de Cler...and date, verso: 1634
bears numberings, verso, in dark brown ink: N^o 28 H.de Clerq, and in red chalk: 6 2-15
bears inscription in an early hand in brown ink, verso (partly illegible and partly obscured by mount): Hendrick de Clerck. nota het Schildery van deze tekening berust tot/ B....dt in St.Bavo...., and another, on a label stuck to verso: het Schilderij/van de P P/te Gendt
pen and brown ink and wash over traces of black chalk, within black ink framing lines, squared in black chalk for transfer
Inv.nr. N 228

351 by 396 mm.

Amsterdam/Dordrecht 1994-5, cat. no. 3

Professor Dr. Einar Perman, Stockholm

Hendrik de Clerck's training remains something of a mystery. He is known to have been studying in Rome under the Fleming Frans van de Kasteele in 1587, and may also have trained there with Joos van Winghe, but his style was strongly influenced by the Antwerp artist Maerten de Vos, who may also have been one of his teachers. In any case, De Clerck was based in Brussels by 1594, when he was appointed court painter to Archduke Ernst, a position he retained when the Archduke died in 1596 and was succeeded by Albert and Isabella. Throughout a long and productive career, De Clerck executed many paintings for the Archducal couple, and also for numerous churches and guilds in and around the city, often collaborating with other artists, notably with the landscape painter Denijs van Alsloot.

The present drawing, which is one of the highlights of the Unicorno Collection, relates to the elaborate altarpiece that the artist painted for the Guild of Crossbowmen, whose patron saint was St. Sebastian; the altarpiece is housed in the church of St. Martin, in Asse, near Brussels. Having been inactive for some time, this guild was re-established in 1617, which may have provided the occasion for the commission. In any case, it was about this time that De Clerck was instructed to paint his altarpiece, in which the central panel shows St. Sebastian being shot with arrows and the wings show other episodes from the life of the Saint. This was clearly an important commission for the artist, and he made a number of elaborate drawings relating to it. The present work, though squared for transfer, was not precisely followed in the finished work, in which the composition is more narrowly upright and the figures to the left of the Saint have been excluded. In another drawing now at Schloss Wolfegg, De Clerck explored a different, broader composition, with the Saint located, as in the finished painting, to the left, but the archers placed much further to the right, separated from him by numerous onlookers (see W. Laureyssens, 'De triptiek met de marteling van Sint Sebastiaan inde Sint-Martinuskerk te Asse,' in Asnania, Asse 1989, no. 3-4, p. 106, fig. 4). It is possible that the Wolfegg drawing was the artist's first idea for the Asse painting, which he then reduced to the more limited composition of the present drawing and the final painting, or perhaps the Wolfegg drawing relates to another painting of the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, which Terlinden mentions as being in the church of St. Peter at Louvain (see Vicomte Terlinden, 'Henri de Clerck, le peintre de Nôtre-Dame de la Chapelle, 1570(?)-1630,' in Revue Belge d'Archéologie et d'Histoire de l'Art, 21, 1952, p.86).

Elaborate, finished drawings for the wings of the Asse altarpiece also survive, in Munich, Brussels and the British Museum (see Laureyssens, op.cit., figs. 5-8), and there is also a studio drawing in the University Library, Erlangen, which combines various elements of the present drawing and the finished painting and may record another, lost original drawing by De Clerck (see Laureyssens, op.cit., p. 114, fig, 11).