Panoramic View of Antwerp from the East

1636

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 197.5 cm × width 367 cm
outer size: depth 10 cm (support incl. frame)
total: weight 75 kg

Inscriptions

signature and date, bottom right: I. WILDENS [D and E damaged]. FECIT. 1636 [3 damaged]

Conservation

W.A. Hopman, 1886: treated
E. Tromp, 1993: cleaned and restored

Provenance

…; anonymous sale [Jonkheer Hendrik Six van Hillegom (1790-1847), Lord of Hillegom], Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 25 November 1852, no. 8, as Fluweele Bruegel (‘Eene kapitale Schilderij, voorstellende een gezigt op de stad Antwerpen en het omliggende land, genomen uit de hoogte en rijk gestoffeerd met beelden en paarden. hoog 2 el, breed 3 el 50 d. Doek’), bought in at fl. 25; donated by Jonkheer Jan Pieter Six, Lord of Hillegom (1824-99) to the museum, 1852, as Bruegel;¹ on loan through the DRVK, since 1951; on loan to the Middelburg Town Hall, since 1951

Object number: SK-A-616

Credit line: Gift of Jonkheer Six van Hillegom, Amsterdam

The artist

Jan Wildens (Antwerp 1583/84 - Antwerp 1653)

The artist and dealer, Jan Wildens, chiefly known for his landscapes, was born in Antwerp in 1583 or 1584,² the son of Hendrik Wildens and Magdalena Vosbergen. His mother early widowed remarried Cornelis Cock. Jan was a pupil of Peeter Verhulst from 1596 and became a master eight years later.³ Although he took on a pupil in 1610,⁴ nothing certain is known of his early work, but he was already the possessor of funds sufficient to make bequests to his siblings and half siblings in the will he made in 1613 prior to his departure to Italy.⁵ His earliest, extant dated painting is of 1614, one of a series of the months of the year, long recorded in a Genoese collection in which city it was most likely executed.⁶ He may have returned to Antwerp by 1616.⁷ At all events he married Maria Stappaert there three years later; the wedding contract is significant for the references to his wealth and dealership and also to Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), one of the witnesses, as ‘his good friend’;⁸ Rubens is known to have painted his portrait and one of his mother.⁹ The Stappaerts were likely members of the wealthy bourgeoisie and Wildens was to become distantly related to the famous artist when Rubens married Helena Fourment in 1630; their ties remained such that Rubens appointed him one of three who were to supervise the sale of his collection after his death in 1640.¹⁰

The couple lived in the Minderbroederstraat and their portraits by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) would have displayed their prosperous, social standing.¹¹ Following the death of his mother in 1622 and of his wife two years later, Wildens moved into the former’s substantial property in the Lange Nieuwstraat. This was to house a large accumulation of paintings – presumably part collection part stock – and extensive other possessions which were recorded in the estate inventory of his only surviving son, Jeremias, who died 30 December 1653,¹² and whom he had predeceased on 16 October of that year.¹³ There were no direct heirs as Jan had not remarried and Jeremias, at 32, was still a bachelor.

Wildens’s preference was to work on a large scale but there are only extant or recorded, signed and dated works for 1614, 1619, 1624, 1625, 1631 and 1636 (see below).¹⁴ His extant painted oeuvre may not be large.¹⁵ Cornelis de Bie saw his work only in relation to Rubens¹⁶ and it is chiefly as his collaborator in the provision of landscape backgrounds that Wildens is known. The estate inventory provides some small evidence of this collaboration,¹⁷ but his undocumented work with Rubens and other artist is thought to have been quite extensive. Adler records passes to travel abroad, issued to him in 1632, 1635, 1641, 1642,¹⁸ maybe to attend the Paris fair as a picture dealer, and the ninety-six packets of pigments separately listed in his office in the inventory of 1653,¹⁹ also suggests that he acted as an artist’s colour-man.

His portrait by Van Dyck of the 1630s was engraved by Paulus Pontius (1603-1658) accompanied by the same epithet as given to other landscape specialists in the Iconography, ‘painter of rural views’;²⁰ in fact, Wildens was also a competent figure painter²¹ and a still life by him was listed after his death in the house in the Lange Nieuwstraat.²²

REFERENCES
W. Adler, Jan Wildens: Der Landschaftsmitarbeiter des Rubens, Fridingen 1980

Entry

The view is of the city of Antwerp from the east taken from a point above and between the two roads then known as ‘De Straet over Lanteren-hof’ and that on the left ‘den Steenwech’ in the direction of Berchem. Maps were available which could have served as an aide-mémoire.²³ In the centre, middle distance, is the Sint-Jorispoort or the Keizerspoort, built between 1542-54; to the north extends the city wall built in the same period also in white stone, and much praised by Ludovico Guiccardini in 1567.²⁴ To the left extending southwards to the citadel is the earth rampart topped by a fence, known as ‘Joincte’, measures for the erection of which were taken by the Archduchess Isabella in 1625.²⁵ The remnants of the stone defences were removed in 1860-63.

The spires, set against the skyline, may be identified, from the left, as those of Sint-Michielsabdij, the Sint-Joriskerk, Sint-Andrieskerk, Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk, the Karmelitenbroedersklooster, Sint-Jacobskerk and of the Klooster der Predikheren. Couvreur gives a detailed description,²⁶ based chiefly on the Brussels version (for which see below). Before the Sint-Jorispoort can be made out a watering place for horses. Maps are inconsistent about the number and location of windmills beside the approach roads (one is surpressed in the present painting, while none occurs in the Brussels version referred to below); but in some maps is marked a tower also, suppressed in the present painting, referred to above, identified simply as ‘Redout’ on the Berchem road, nearly opposite the Sint-Jorispoort.

It has recently been shown that the Marquès de Leganés (1580-1655) acquired ‘two Antwerp views from the land side and another from the water side by Wildens…’ during his brief tour of duty in the Spanish Netherlands in the winter of 1634-35.²⁷ The latter view has been identified as that in the Brussels museum;²⁸ the whereabouts of the former ‘to the land side’ is not known. Also unknown are the whereabouts of the ‘two large canvas paintings showing the water and land sides of this city’ for which, as recorded in the accounts of the city of Antwerp for 23 May 1635, a payment was to be made to Jan Wildens.²⁹ These were supposedly for the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, who made his Joyous Entry into the city on 17 April 1635. As the present painting is signed and dated 1636 it may be presumed to be a near replica (having regard to the pentiments in the foreground) of those previously executed; three other similar views are extant, see below.

The 1653/54 inventory of the estate of Jeremias Wildens, who died soon after his father Jan, lists four pendant views presumably similar to those earlier painted; these are not specified as by Jan – as occurs with other paintings in the inventory – and so are most likely replicas by Jeremias.³⁰ Pendant views, but smaller than the Rijksmuseum picture, were on the London market in 1972.³¹ Whether there was a pendant to the present work, a view of the city from across the Scheldt – ‘naer de watersijde’ – is not known. Four other views of the city, of approximately the same size, two from each viewpoint are known, of these, two, in the Brussels museum, already constitute a pair;³² the two others are in the Dieppe museum³³ and in the Nationaal Scheepvaartmuseum, Antwerp (on loan).³⁴ The river views are all said to record the arrival of the Dowager Queen Marie de Médicis at Antwerp in September 1631; so it is likely that a pendant to the present painting of 1636 would have done the same. However, this latter could have been executed and /or sold without a pendant; a single such view – although not specified as by Wildens – was listed ‘voor de schouwe’, on the mantelpiece, in the inventory of an Antwerp estate of 1661.³⁵

Wildens is thought to have supplied landscape backgrounds for figure painters, and perhaps towards the end of his career other artists supplied the staffage for his own landscapes.³⁶ But he early developed his own manner of executing figures and animals on a small scale, thus not relying on others.³⁷ The figures in the present painting conform to his generally accepted manner as demonstrated for instance in the Month of July of 1614 executed when he was in Italy.³⁸

The 1653/54 inventory refers to landscapes most likely by Jeremias, but presumably following his father’s example, as yet ‘ungestoffert’,³⁹ that is without the staffage having been introduced. The arrangement of figures and animals in the extant views of Antwerp from the land side follow the same general pattern; this might have been the case already in the lost painting owned by Leganés and those destined for the Cardinal-Infante but it is impossible to say for certain. The variations in the disposition of the ‘better sort’ promenading in the bottom left-hand corners may have been requested by, and have had a particular reference to, prospective owners.

The peasants in the foreground are engaged in autumnal work: harvesting root crops, sowing and picking fruit. The peasant digging in the foreground is a quotation from a print by Jan Saenredam (1565-1607) after Abraham Bloemaert (1566-1651).⁴⁰

Gregory Martin, 2022

Literature

W. Adler, Jan Wildens: Der Landschaftsmitarbeiter des Rubens, Fridingen 1980, p. 108, no. G.68; Couvreur, ‘Ikonografie’, in W. Couvreur (ed.), Antwerpen in de XVIIde Eeuw, s.l. [Antwerp] 1989, p. 494, no. 5, fig 6a

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 190, no. 1630; 1903, p. 299, no. 2679; 1934, p. 318, no. 2679; 1976, p. 605, no. A 616

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'Jan Wildens, Panoramic View of Antwerp from the East, 1636', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6952

(accessed 24 November 2024 01:25:30).