Death Carrying off the Father of a Family

Entry

This deeply carved diorama is a faithful copy of an engraving from Otto van Veen’s book of emblems Quinti Horatii Flacci Emblemata (first ed. Antwerp 1607). It shows a father being carried off by Death. He must leave his grief-stricken wife and children behind. At the bottom of the relief a motto has been cut in high relief: Il faut tout quitter en mourant (At death all must be relinquished), after a well-known passage from one of Horace’s Odes (II, 14). Evidently the maker of the relief had used the 1682 French publication of the book. As was customary with dioramas picture boxes, the relief was set in a frame behind glass (which today is stored separately).

The object comes from the Hermans-Smits collection, which the museum purchased in its entirety in 1875. It is accompanied by another diorama, depicting another symbol from the same book of emblems (BK-NM-2512). However, there would not seem to be a logical connection between the two representations. The name ‘Louis Huijsmans’ and the date – 13 March 1866 – marked in pencil on the reverse of the other diorama probably refer to its then owner, who can be identified as the later Belgian Minister of State, Louis Huysmans (1844-1915).

Although they are considerably less finely detailed, the two dioramas have a great deal in common with those made by the Tyrolean sculptor, Sebastian Steiner (1836-1896). Steiner made countless dioramas of this type, usually after genre scenes by his contemporary, the Tyrolean painter Franz von Defregger (1835-1921), but also after compositions from the past, like those of the sculptor Alexander Colyn (c. 1527-1612), who hailed from Mechelen and worked in Germany. In a diorama depicting The Nest Robber ascribed to Sebastian Steiner, after the painting with the same title made in 1852 by the Viennese artist August Gerasch (1822-1908), we encounter a very similar eagle to that depicted in the other diorama. ² The Amsterdam boxes would have been made by a follower or someone from Steiner’s atelier workforce.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025