Description
The Four Elements : A Greengrocer's Stall with the Flight into Egypt beyond - an Allegory of Earth; A Fishmonger's Stall in a town with the Miraculous Draught of Fishes beyond - an Allegory of Water; A Poultry Stall in a town with the Prodigal Son beyond - an Allegory Air; and A kitchen scene with Christ in the House of Mary and Martha beyond - an Allegory of Fire. the first signed and dated 'Joahim JB buekelaer/1569' (JB in monogram, lower right); the second signed and dated 'Joahim buekelear/15.JB.69' (JB in monogram, lower centre); the third signed and dated 'Joahim beukelaer/1570' (lower left); the fourth signed and dated 'Joahim beukelaer/.JB.' (JB in monogram, centre right) and dated '1570' (above the doorway, upper left) oil on canvas 617/8 x 843/8 in. (157.3 x 214.2 cm.); 623/8 x 845/8 in. (158.5 x 215 cm.); 617/8 x 845/8 in. (157.3 x 215 cm.) and 62 x 847/8 in. (157.5 x 215.5 cm.) a set of four (4) PROVENANCE Ferdinand Panciatichi Ximenes d'Aragona, Marquess of Saturnia and Esche (d. 1813-1897); (+) sale, Galardelli & Mazzoni, Florence, 11 April 1902, lot 165, with illustration of the Poultry Market. LITERATURE P. Verbraeken, et al., catalogue of the exhibition, Joachim Beuckelaer, Het markt-en keukenstuk in de Nederlanden 1550-1650, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Gent, 1986, passim. P. Hecht, 'Ghent Joachim Beuckelaer', Burlington Magazine, May, 1987, pp. 341-3, fig. 83 (Allegory of Air). J. Gerits, 'Joachim Beuckelaer in de belangstelling', ons Heem, XVI, no. 4, 1987, pp. 122-5, fig. 24 (Allegory of Fire). M. Zeilemaker, 'Over eten, koken en kunst', Vitrine, November/December, 1988, p. 19, illustrated (Allegory of Fire), p. 22, illustrated (Allegory of Earth). R. Hoozee, Museum voor Schone Kunsten Gent, 1988, pp. 41/2, illustrated (Allegories of Air and Fire ) R. Genaille, 'Le paysage dans la Peinture des anciens Pay Bas au Temps de Brueghel', Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 1988, p. 177, note 102-3, fig. 17 (Allegory of Air). H. Buys, 'Voorstellingen van Christus in het Huis van Maria en Martha in het zestiende eeuwse keukenstuk', Nederlands Kunshistorisch Jaarboek, 1989, XXXX, p. 97. C. Canta, 'Joachim Beuckelaer et l'Italie. Rayonnement d'un Peintre anversois au XVI e SiŠcle', Bulletin de la Classe des Beaux Arts, 1989, pp. 161 and 164, note 9, fig. 5 (Allegory of Fire). R. Genaille, 'Reflexions sur le Maintien des Sujets Religieux dans les Tableaux de genre et de natures mortes au XVI e m e SiŠcle', Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 1989, pp. 290-211, fig. 12 (Allegory of Fire), and p. 296, note 64, fig. 14 (Allegory of Water). L. Moulin, Europa aan Tafel, 1989, p. 378, with illustration (Allegory of Air). 'Die faul Hausmaid', Jahrbuch fr frankische Landersforschung, XXXXXIII, 1992, p. 34, fig. 2 (Allegory of Fire). T. Coppens, 'Het lekkerste museum van Nederland', Vitrine, V, 1994, p. 33, illustrated (Allegory of Fire). A. Gilbert, Joachim Beuckelaer (1533-1575), DerniŠres Oeuvres, 1994, pp. 1-2, nos. 3-6. P. Roberts-Jones, Geschiedenis van de Schilderkunst in Belgie van de 14de Eeuw to vandaag, 1995, p. 149, with illustration (Allegory of Fire). L. Fornari Schianchi, N. Spinosa, I Farnese, Arte e Collezionismo, 1995, p. 261. M. Santucci, in N. Spinosa, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, La Collezione Farnese, 2, 1995, p. 151 (Allegory of Water) and p. 152 (Allegory of Air). R.L. Falkenburg, Saur's Allgemeines Kunstlerlexikon, 1995, X, p. 275. M. Wolters, Atelierpraktijken in de zestiende eeuw, Museumkrant Museum voor Schone Kunsten/Gent, VI/4, 1996. E.A. Honig, Painting and the Market in early modern Antwerp, 1998, p. 88, figs. 29, 33 and 34 (Allegories of Water, Earth and Air). R. van Uytven, De zinnelijke Middeleeuwen, 1998, pp. 172-3, illustrated (Allegories of Air and Water). E. Vink, 'Mondkost en Tafelcultuur', catalogue of the exhibition, 'sHertogenbosch Binnenskamers, Aspecten van Stedelijke Woon - en Leefculturen, 1650-1850, 1999, p. 27, illustrated (Allegory of Earth). R. Hoozee, 1De laatste Zaal', '200 Jaar Verzamelen', in A. Balis, et. al., Collectieboek Museum voor Schone Kunsten Gent, 2000, p. 257, p. 258, fig. 190. P. Janssen, et al., De Gouden Delta der Lage Landen ; Twintig Eeuwen Beschaving tussen Seine en Rijn, 1996, p. 99, illustrated (Allegory of Air). A. Boddaert, Y. Robert and G.G. Simeone, Chefs-d'oeuvre artistiques et Patrimoine Majeur de la Belgique, 2000, pp. 150-1, illustrated (Allegories of Earth, Water and Air). EXHIBITION Ghent, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Joachim Beuckelaer, Het Markt - en Keukenstuk in de Nederlanden 1550-1650, 12 December 1986-8 March 1987, nos. 8-11, illustrated. Ghent, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1986-2000 (on loan). Antwerp, Handelshuis, Europa aan Tafel, een verkenning van onze eet-en tafelcultuur, 25 September-31 December 1993, no. B57, with illustration (Allegory of Earth). Lisbon, Centro Cultural de Belem; and Antwerp, Hessenhuis, Fascinerende Facetten van Vlaanderen, 20 June-25 Ocotber 1998 and 21 November - 21 February 1999, pp. 261-2, nos. D5-8, illustrated. NOTES Following its sale in Florence nearly a hundred years ago, this series of The Four Elements was lost from sight until its discovery in a castle near Mons in 1981 and its sale to the present vendor. Its inclusion as the centrepiece in the Beuckelaer exhibition in Ghent in 1986/7 with its full and detailed catalogue led to a critical re-assessment and re-evaluation of his art. As the Ghent exhibition catalogue pointed out, the discovery of these scenes was of importance because they constitute a coherent set, which is unique in Beuckelaer's oeuvre (the present set may well be identical with the a set of four Elements (661/2 x 921/2 in.) by Beuckelaer, removed from Dodington Park, and offered by Sir Gerald Codrington, bought at Christie's by Speelman on 13 July 1923, as lot 6). And as late works, they are a major addition to the corpus of his paintings. Well preserved, each scene reveals Beuckelaer's fluent and brilliant handling of the brush and his vivid sense of colour. Hitherto - since Sievers' fundamental study of the artist in the Jahrbuch der K”ninglichen Preuszischen Kunstsammlungen of 1911 - seen as working in the shadow of his uncle and teacher, Pieter Aertsen, Beuckelaer can now be seen as a signifcant artist in his own right. While the two first paintings from the series are dated 1569, the other two are dated 1570. The difference in dating might indicate that Beuckelaer spent quite some time on its execution. And this in itself would be an indicator on the scale of the task accomplished by the artist. They were painted at the height of his career - not long before his death at the comparatively early age of about forty, in circa 1575, after working as an independent master in Antwerp since 1560 - and clearly show Beuckelaer's idiosyncratic contribution to the development of the market and kitchen scenes, which genres had been invented by Pieter Aertsen. Beuckelaer, by adopting a closer viewpoint, introduced a monumentality of scale, first evident, as Falckenburg points out, from 1567 ( op. cit., p. 273). As Verbraeken in the Ghent exhibition catalogue, 1986, p. 129, affirmed, the extension of the spatial setting became an objective in the artist's late works. The development in this regard can be observed by a comparison of the two works of 1569 and those of a year later. In the two later works he successfully and convincingly integrated the large-scale figures in their surroundings, which no longer give the impression of backdrops. In the case of the Kitchen Scene, Beuckelaer conveyed the sense of space, punctuated by the open doors and shutters, in the suite of rooms by the use of two vanishing points as was shown in the Ghent exhibition catalogue, 1986, p. 130, fig. 1. Three of the compositions were prepared for by earlier works. The Allegory of Earth is preceded by the smaller Vegetable Market of 1563 at Valenciennes (P. Verbraeken, et.al., op. cit., no. 2, illustrated) in which there is only one stall owner. The Allegory of Air was immediately preceded by the market scene in Naples of 1569 (Santucci, Spinosa, op. cit. ), which is smaller and has fewer figures. The Allegory of Fire was also immediately preceded by the Butcher's Stall, also at Naples and of 1569, where the spatial construction is far less ambitious. Also by the pictures of 1563, in the Rijksmuseum (Sievers, op. cit., p. 206) and of 1566, in the Mus‚es Royaux des Beaux Arts, Antwerp ( ibid., p. 201, fig. 5). Also the picture in the Musees Royaux des beaux Arts, Brussels, which is comparable as for its construction of space. In contrast there is no comparable earlier rendering of the Allegory of Water, nor is one to be found in Aertsen's work, which suggests that its composition might be Beuckelaer's own invention and possibly devised especially for the series. It was to prove popular, for six Fishmonger's Stalls are known, among which the pictures of 1569 and 1570, in the Capodimonte, Naples (Santucci, Spinosa, op. cit., pp. 150-1, illustrated). All four pictures have been examined by infrared, first by the museum in Ghent, preceding the 1986 exhibition, later by infraredreflectography at the end of the 1990s during the project to research studio practices of Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer, set up by Professor Dr J.R. van Asperen de Boer of the University of Groningen. Participants in this project were Drs. Margreet Wolters and Drs. Peter van den Brink. As first observed by J. van Looveren in the Ghent exhibition catalogue, p. 80, and confirmed by M. Wolters, loc. cit., in all four pictures infrared underdrawing was revealed, which in comparison with earlier works by the artist is only sketchy in character and limited to the broad outlines of the composition. It was further observed that underdrawing is almost absent in the figures. Here the outlines have been drawn directly by the brush (see illustration), in the same free handling as the almost monochrome background scenes. These free brushed outlines and the number of changes in the final details in comparison to the forms in the underdrawing has led Wolters, op. cit., to come to the provisional conclusion that the series can be regarded as the result of a highly artistic working process, whereby there was not a fixed result foreseen. Her definite conclusions will be published in her forthcoming dissertation. The series would primarily have appealed to the encyclopaedic interest in nature, an interest that saw the contemporary development of the wunderkammer. The three market scenes present an incredible array of the produce of nature, beautifully and precisely delineated. Sixteen different types of vegetable and fruit and twelve different species of fish were identified in the 1986 Ghent exhibition catalogue (pp. 67-77). In another respect, and inspired by the work of Pieter Brueghel I, they illustrate the growing confidence with which the world or man's surroundings were viewed. Beuckelaer here presents a village landscape, two townscapes and a contemporary, well appointed interior. Beuckelaer assembled this mass of acutely described information about the visible world into four basic classifications, by which physical phenomena and man's nature were understood and whose validity was to be swept away by the discoveries of modern science. The first was of the Four Elements. The Aristotelian elements contained binary combinations of fundamental properties: 'fire' being hot and dry, 'air' hot and wet, 'water' cold and wet, and 'earth' cold and dry. Combinations of these properties were considered to have taken part in forming a body. The Four Elements were linked, too, to the secondary classification of the Four Temperaments - as categorised by medieval physiologists - whose differing combinations formed the human personality: choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, and melancholic respectively. And as the Ghent exhibition catalogue of 1986 suggests, the Temperaments are also probably here alluded to. J. Emmens ('"Eins aber ist notig" - Zu Inhalf und Bedeutung von Markt: und Kchenstcken des 16. Jahrhunderts', Album Amicorum J.G. van Gelder, 1973), constructed a moralising intent from the contrast between the civitas terrena depicted in the foregrounds, with the emphasis on plenty and sexual innuendo, and the civitas Dei depicted in the backgrounds, being brought out, for instance, in the canvases in the present set by religious scenes of the Flight into Egypt, The Calling of St. Peter, the Prodigal Son and Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. G. Irmscher ('Ministrae Voluptatum: stoicizing ethics in the market and kitchen scenes of Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer', Simiolus, XVI, 1988) saw in the butchers, fishmongers and cooks precisely those professions described by Cicero in his De Officiis as dishonorable, a book highly popular at the time and first translated by Erasmus. In his opinion, these dishonorable professions were used in the market and kitchen scenes as the bearers of the moral message. Hecht ( op. cit., p. 343) has warned against taking such moral interpretations too far. Nothing is known as yet of the provenance of the set prior to its sale in Florence in 1902. Canta ( op. cit. ) has pointed out that Beuckelaer only used canvas as a support late in his career, and could have selected it because it facilitated transport over long journies. Bartolomeo Panciatichi (1507-1582), chancellor to the Grand Duke in Florence, was a patron of Bronzino, and a presumed ancestor of the vendor of 1902; and taking into account that the sale took place in Florence, it seems possible that the series was painted for export to Italy. Italian interest in Beuckelaer's art is demonstrated by the seven paintings listed as in the Palazzo del Giardino, Parma, in 1680; these had probably been acquired by Margaret of Parma, Regent of the Netherlands 1559-1567, returning there 1580-1583, or by Alessandro Farnese, who was Governor of the Netherlands from 1578 until his death in 1592 (see Santucci, op. cit., pp. 147-148). Beuckelaer's influence on Vincenzo Campi, who is known to have visited Parma, is already evident by circa 1578 in his market scenes in the Brera and at Schloss Kirchheim. SALESROOM NOTICE The present lot may be identical with the set of four Elements (661/2 x 921/2in.(168.9 x 235cm.) by Beuckelaer, removed from Dodington Park, and offered by Sir Gerald Codrington, bought at Christie's by Speelman on 13 July 1923, as lot 6.
