Marten van Cleve, Lot n° 349

FAMILY SCENE IN A FAMILY HOUSE Oil on oak wood. 76 x 84.5 cm. The painting is in close thematic proximity to the painting "A Flemish household", created by Van Cleve around 1555. Less rich in figures than there, but all the more vivid and intimate, the family genre is presented here. As is often the case in his interiors, a right-hand wooden wall is used as a room divider to provide perspective to the rear, with a shelf for kitchen utensils, pots and brass bowls. The picture above shows the door frame partially covered by the wooden partition wall, with a view into a tree garden. On the left in the background a fireplace with a kettle on a tooth saw hook. However, the viewer's gaze is first of all directed to the centre of the picture, alongside the numerous details, such as a heap of onions at the bottom left, dried herrings on the back wall or a basket of fruit on a shelf. A young mother sits in a toddler basket on the floor, holding her naked infant on her lap. The white of the cloth and the woman's bonnet shine out of the toned colours of the overall impression. The other figures of the family idyll are similarly highlighted in colour. The young man standing behind them, supported by a bundle of brushwood, leans forward slightly. Trousers and cap in bright red make him look like a father. The woman with white headscarf crouching in front of the wood fire may be interpreted as belonging to the family, as may the boy on the right holding his soup spoon. He shows a tearful face, probably because of the chicken that has also approached his bowl. Van Cleve's painting "Rural Interior with Prominent Visitors", which is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, shows a very similar spatial reproduction, also with almost the same details, such as the partition wall on the right, a mother with child, or the cot with cat and a domestic pig in the foreground. Between the still-life-like details of the picture, we are dealing here with the g