Object data
oil on panel
support: height 40.8 cm × width 27.7 cm
outer size: depth 4.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Lucas Franchoys (II)
Portrait of François de Gand-Vilain (1647-1666), Bishop of Doornik
1651 - 1655
Inscriptions
- coat of arms, top right: De sable au chef d’argent casque timbré d’une couronne murale
- inscription, in Roman numerals, top right, on either side of the escutcheon: XIIII
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 13 October 2006
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 3 September 2007
Provenance
...; sale, Jacques de Hooghe (†), Antwerp (Caudron and J.P.F. Ruggenberg), 14 June 1773 sqq., no. 11 (‘Le Portrait d’un Evêque, dans un fauteuil, sur bois avec L’Estampe. ayant pour titre: Ill mo ac Rmo Domino D. Francisco Villani à Gandavo, Baroni de Rassenghien, Episcopo Tornacensi &c., par Luc François pinxit, gravée par van Schuppen. [pies] 1 - [po.] 5 [pies] 1 - [po.] 0 [44.7 x 31.4 cm, with frame]’), bf 10;1...; from the heirs of Jonkheer Pieter Hendrik Six van Vromade (1827-1905), Amsterdam, with 37 other pictures, fl. 751,000, to the Dutch Government with a contribution from the Rembrandt Society of fl. 200,000, 1907; presented to the museum, 1908; on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, since 1999
Object number: SK-A-2323
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Lucas Franchoys II (Mechelen 1616 - Mechelen 1681)
The portrait and figure painter Lucas Franchoys II was born in Mechelen and baptized in the Sint-Romboutskathedraal on 28 June 1616. He was the second son of his homonymous father, also an artist, who is presumed to have taught him and his elder brother Peeter. His biographer Cornelis de Bie records Lucas as having been an apprentice of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640);2 if such was the case his presence in Rubens’s studio must have been during the 1630s as he would only have been twelve when Rubens closed down his studio in 1628 for nearly two years during his absence abroad. De Bie also records that the artist worked in France at the court of the Prince de Condé (1621-1686); presumably this took place in the 1640s. By or rather before 1649 at the latest, he had returned to the southern Netherlands as his self-portrait was engraved by Coenraet Waumans (1619-after 1675), active in Antwerp, and published in that year;3 the caption to the print described him as ‘a painter very skilful and famous for his large-scale compositions and portraits born in Mechelen’ (peintre tres expert et renommé en grand ordonnances et pourtraicts née à Malines). Indeed, he must have been already active in Doornik as his brother-in-law in Mechelen is recorded as having lent him money to travel there, and a wing of an altarpiece in the cathedral attributed to him is also dated to 1649. Hairs discusses further altarpieces in Doornik churches dated up to and after 1654 when the artist is recorded in his native city where he joined the guild of St Luke in 1655; he became its dean in 1663. In Mechelen he was favoured by the patronage of the archbishop who secured him a post in the cathedral chapter. His ecclesiastical practice continued to be extensive. He married in 1668 and had eight children. Franchoys died on 3 April 1681 and was buried the following day in the Sint-Janskerk. De Saligny has published an account of his oeuvre; Hairs has discussed it in greater detail.
REFERENCES
F. de Saligny, ‘Lucas Franchoys’, Bulletin Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België 16 (1967), pp. 209-32; M.-L. Hairs, Dans le Sillage de Rubens, Liège 1977, 184-88
Entry
The sitter, François de Gand-Vilain, Baron of Rasenghiem, a member of an ancient and extended noble family of Brabant, was the second son of Jacques Philippe de Gand-Vilain, and succeeded his uncle Philippe-Maximilien, as Bishop of Doornik (Tournai), which post he held for nineteen years until his death at the end of 1666.4 The coat of arms is that of the de Gand-Vilain family.5 Lucas Franchoys II also painted full-length portraits of both men as pendants; these are still in the possession of the bishopric at Doornik.6
The family of de Gand-Vilain bore a numerical epithet XIIII, which appears twice on the escutcheon in the present picture. Two explanations have been advanced for it: that a member of the family obtained permission from Louis XIV to adopt it on his coat of arms as he was one of the party which offered him the keys of the city of Ghent.7 This cannot have been the case, however, as Louis XIV’s campaigns in the southern Netherlands only began in 1657. Thus the explanation advanced by Goethals that it was a pun deriving from a family motto ‘verdien in hope’ appears to be more likely.8
The present picture was the prototype for the print by Pierre Louis van Schuppen (1627-1702),9 dedicated to the sitter by Franchoys. It measures 38.3 x 27.8 and can be fairly precisely dated between 1651 and 1655, as the sitter was elevated to the bishopric of Doornik in 1647,10 while Franchoys was recorded as working there from 1649 and Van Schuppen, who became a master in the Antwerp guild in 1651, had left the southern Netherlands for Paris soon after 1651 or by 1655.11 The support of Baltic/Polish oak would have been ready for use from 1652. This is the only known example of collaboration between Franchoys and Van Schuppen. About contemporary, and perhaps an influence, is David Teniers II’s (1610-1690) modello for Paulus Pontius’s (1603-1658) engraving of the Portrait of Antoine Triest, Bishop of Ghent of 1652, with which the present work can be compared.12
How and why the print should have been so prominently included as the only fold-out in the 1759 edition of Anthony van Dyck’s Iconography, published by Arkstée and Merkus, in which only two or three others were interlopers, is a mystery, but one outside the scope of this entry.
Gregory Martin, 2022
Literature
F. de Saligny, ‘Lucas Franchoys’, Bulletin Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België 16 (1967), pp. 209-32, esp. p. 218, no. 10 and fig. 6; H. Colsoul, Lucas Franchoys der Jüngere: 1616-1681 oeuvrecatalogus, 2 vols., Mechelen 1989-90, no. 72 and figs. 135, 136
Collection catalogues
1908, p. 418, no. 939a (as Lucas Francois, François Villain de Gand); 1912, p. 355, no. 939a; 1921, p. 373, no. 939a; 1976, p. 230, no. A 2323 (as Lucas Franchoys II François Villain de Gand)
Citation
G. Martin, 2022, 'Lucas (II) Franchoys, Portrait of François de Gand-Vilain (1647-1666), Bishop of Doornik, 1651 - 1655', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8438
(accessed 5 October 2024 11:28:12).