Two Men at Cards Outside a Country Inn

Entry

The attribution of the present painting to Vincent Malò (that is Vincent Malò I), first published in the 1887 catalogue, has much to commend it. But as discussed below, it is problematic. The difficulties in the way of it tend to favour an attribution to his homonymous son, a view with which Schepers tends to agree.¹⁵

The monogram, like that on the other painting by Malò in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-781), is inscribed in a deliberately inconspicuous manner and was not detected until the 1880s; its form is documented in an inventory of a deceased, Antwerp estate made in 1644.¹⁶ The present support is one of oak, which would have been ready for use from 1626, more probably from 1632; the reverse was coated in a ground in a manner typical of Antwerp practice.¹⁷ This would suggest that the painting was executed there rather than south of the Alps; whether such a support could have been available to the Flemish community of artists in Genoa is an open question, touched on below. But significant is Malò’s departure from Antwerp in 1634 or there abouts, never to return.

This is of relevance because the style and tone of the present depiction of a country inn is different from that of peasant scenes by other artists active in Antwerp in the first half or so of the 1630s, for instance, those by Adriaen Brouwer (1603/05-1638)¹⁸, and David Teniers II (1610-1690),¹⁹ let alone Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640),²⁰ and perhaps to be included here, by Cornelis Saftleven (1607-1681).²¹ The two roughly executed peasant interiors in the De Geus van den Heuvel sale, which have been attributed to Vincent Malò I, seem more in line with the outspoken and uninhibited genre scenes of that time,²² characteristics evident enough in two peasant interiors at Dresden and the Castello Sforzesca, Milan, which have been attributed to the artist at the RKD.²³

Another factor that would point to a date of execution after the mid-1630s is the influence of Cornelis de Wael (1592-1667) in the handling and emphasis on profiles. Indeed, the physiognomy of the bald card player in the Rijksmuseum picture is similar to the drinker with a pitcher in the first state of an etching of an inn scene attributed to De Wael and datable to circa 1640-50,²⁴ while the dog makes an appearance in Gustus engraved by Alexander Voet (1613-1689/90) after De Wael.²⁵ Soprani records that Malò I executed ‘very nice and valuable little panels’²⁶ in the early years of his activity in Genoa. And it is possible that Antwerp supports were available in Genoa.²⁷

However, the detached, amused depiction of country and peasant life conveyed here is more in tune with Teniers’s vision in the early 1640s²⁸ and later; if this is accepted then the possible role of Malò’s son becomes relevant. The few known facts about his life are given above; it is assumed that he remained with his father until around the time of the latter’s death in Rome and then returned to Antwerp. There his expertise in Italian art was recognized by his putative journey to London to acquire paintings from Charles I’s collection and he produced a body of works before his enrolment in the guild, in which could have been the Courtyard of an Inn of 1647 referred to above.²⁹ To judge from a scan of the reproduction in the 1898 sale catalogue, its setting and idiom are sufficiently similar to the Rijksmuseum painting as to warrant its ascription to him. But that the 1647 Courtyard is signed with the artist’s surname in full while the museum courtyard is signed with the same monogram as used (but perhaps not exclusively) by Vincent Malò I indicates how finely balanced is the matter of the latter’s attribution.

The principal figures, seated at the upturned barrel in the present picture, appear to be of a higher social rank than the drinkers nearby. The wishful identifications advanced in the Fraula and Bicker sale catalogues were rejected in the 1858 museum catalogue; nevertheless, even granted the possible appearance of the older man in the print attributed to De Wael, referred to above, it seems that these figures were intended to evoke in some ways an as yet unidentified jocular event.

Gregory Martin, 2022