Vrancx, Sebastiaan Lot n° 9

Sebastiaan Vrancx 1573 Antwerp - 1647 Antwerp The Feeding of the Hungry Oil on panel, mounted on another panel and parquetted. 64.5 x 48.5 cm. Expertise The auction catalogue of Sotheby-Maak van Way, Amsterdam 1977, mentions a now lost copy of an expertise by Dr Eduard Plietzsch from 1947 and an expertise by Dr Walther Bernt from 1963. Provenance With Julius Böhler, Munich; Dr Lutz, Berlin; Dr Hans Wetzlar, Amsterdam; His deceased sale, Sotheby-Mak van Waay, Amsterdam, 9 June 1977, lot 69. Exhibitions Keuze uit de verzameling Dr. H. A. Wetzlar, Laren, Singer Museum, 14 December 1968-26 January 1969, no. 32 (reproduced in the catalogue plate 7). Literature Friedrich Winkler: Der unbekannte Sebastian Vrancx, in: Pantheon, XXII (1964), pp. 322-34, reproduced; Suyin Scheid, in: Ekkehard Mai (ed.): Das Kabinett des Sammlers, Cologne 1993, pp. 264 -266, no. 104, reproduced. The present painting illustrates the Feeding of the Hungry, the first of Seven Christian Works of Mercy. Six of these works are based on the teachings of Jesus handed down in the Gospel of St. Matthew (Mt 25:34-46), while the seventh is a supplement from the apocryphal book of Tobit (Tob. 1:17). In the foreground of this panel, several beggars are depicted as if on a stage, beginning on the left with a raggedly dressed boy between the high bases of two columns. Next to him, we see a young woman leading her blind father and finally a mother with her children being presented loaves of bread by a richly dressed couple in front of the entrance to a magnificent palace. The scene is placed in a setting of magnificent, immaculate Renaissance archite