Object data
oil on panel
support: height 65.1 cm × width 76.1 cm
outer size: depth 6.9 cm (support incl. frame)
Aegidius Sadeler (II) (copy after)
The Interior of the Vladislav Hall, Prague
after 1615
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 24 January 2001
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 18 February 2010
Provenance
…; sale, C.J.G. Copes van Hasselt (†), Madame Copes van Hasselt-Delange (Haarlem), Amsterdam, (C.F. Roos and C.F. Roos Jr.), 20 April 1880, no. 43, as P. Neefs (‘Le Bazar’), fl. 200, to Frederik Muller for Victor de Stuers, from whom, fl. 235, to the museum, 18821
Object number: SK-A-740
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Aegidius Sadeler II (Antwerp c. 1570 - Prague 1629)
A highly successful and prolific engraver and member of a famous family of Flemish graphic artists, Aegidius Sadeler was born in Antwerp in around 1570 and died in Prague in 1629. He was registered in the Antwerp guild in 1585 as the apprentice of his uncle, Jan Sadeler I. Three years later he is recorded as living in Cologne and then Munich; in 1593 he stayed briefly in Rome, to which he returned during his travels in Italy in 1596/97. In the latter year he settled in Prague where he was granted a license to print his work. In 1621 he joined the painters’ guild in Prague – although no certain painting by him is known – and became the master of Joachim von Sandrart I (1606-1688).
REFERENCES
Van Mulder in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., Basingstoke 1996, XXVII, pp. 503-04
Entry
The Vladislav Hall in the Hradcany castle (Royal Palace) in Prague is one of the finest examples of the flamboyant Gothic style in central Europe. Built from 1484 for King Vladislav Jagiello (1456-1516) by Benedict Ried, it is 62 metres long, 9.5 metres wide and 13 metres high. From the sixteenth century it was used chiefly as a market place.
The present picture was recognized as a copy after Aegidius Sadeler’s (c. 1570-1629) print of 16072 soon after it entered the museum. It is slightly larger, and some of the costumes, whose colours were invented, are inaccurate; one bystander is absent in the right middle-ground and the coats of arms in the cusps of the framing vault are barely discernible. The floor is rendered with coloured paving stones, whereas Sadeler specifies, in the inscription to the print, that it was made of wood. The copy was still claimed to be of circa 1607 in the 1976 museum catalogue. The support was ready for use from 1609 and more probably from 1615. But the date of execution could have been a good deal later.
The inscription on the print gives details of the building and its original use as a seat of justice, archival repository, and dining and sleeping quarters. De Hoop Scheffer described the scene as the ‘annual fair’, but the inscription on the print makes clear that the hall was then in use as a regular market place: ‘… all types of booths or if you prefer shops, and permanently placed above are wooden structures which form a surround, the capacious space is extensive, suitable for both leisure and business’.3 Another derivation from Sadeler’s print, attributed to Bartholomeus van Bassen (c. 1590-1652), is in the Martin von Wagner Museum, Würzburg.4
Gregory Martin, 2022
Collection catalogues
1891, p. 184, no. 1560 (Ecole Flamande c. 1600, as after the print by Sadeler; a better version is in the Museum at Würzburg); 1903, p. 30, no. 352 (Anonymous Flemish about 1600); 1918, p. 31, no. 352; 1976, p. 692, no. A 740 (as South Netherlandish School c. 1607).
Citation
G. Martin, 2022, 'copy after Aegidius (II) Sadeler, The Interior of the Vladislav Hall, Prague, after 1615', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6640
(accessed 10 November 2024 18:36:06).