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拍品專文
These six paintings constitute the only intact series of the Peasant Wedding by Marten van Cleve. A further, smaller set of four panels (lacking The wedding feast and The dismissal of the lover) were sold in these Rooms on 6 July 2010 and subsequently Sotheby’s, London, 4 December 2019, lot 21 (Ertz, op. cit., 2014, nos. 143-146). Ertz also recorded a third, dispersed set of five panels by van Cleve (op. cit., 2014, nos. 147-151) and a set of five panels with differing compositions and subjects whose attribution he considered questionable (Ertz, op. cit., nos. 152-156). Finally, there exist no fewer than twenty-four individual paintings relating to the Peasant Wedding, some of which introduce entirely new compositions unknown in the identified series (Ertz, op. cit., nos. 157-180).
The set is composed of (in)discreet, humorous episodes that follow chronologically on one another. In the first scene, the bridegroom – dressed in black and urged on by his companions – gestures hesitantly at the village church. His open cloak framing his genitals and his friend carrying a bow and arrow (the latter pointing to an open pail) both allude to his already pregnant bride, who is similarly guided by a music-making procession of family members in the second panel. In the third painting, the thick-nosed and red-cheeked characters – a thinly veiled allusion to their intemperance and simplicity – shower the bride, who reaches for a plate full of coins, with gifts from all directions. Van Cleve underscores his view of the scene by including the dog playing with a bone underneath the table and two urinating figures, a baby at lower left and man at far right. The subsequent wedding feast is staged at the same table, now draped in white linen with figures crammed even more tightly around it. The bride, seated and crowned, sits before a red hanging emblazoned with three additional crowns. Van Cleve’s staging of this scene probably derives from an etching by Pieter van der Borcht, dated 1560 (fig. 1), while the motif of two men carrying in the food at far left may suggest the artist’s awareness of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Wedding feast of 1567 (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). In Catholic countries in the period, it was a customary ritual on the wedding day to bless the marital bed, the subject of the fifth panel. In the centre of the composition, two female family members help to undress the unenthusiastic bride while the local priest blesses the bed at right as her intoxicated husband slumbers at a table by the doorway. In the seventeenth century, the composition was aptly known as ‘de schreyende bruyt’ (‘the crying bride’). The sixth and final painting here is unique within the three known autograph series and depicts the following morning, when the bride – who raises her hand to her face as she yawns – pushes her lover out of a window. In case there were any doubt about what transpired, van Cleve has included a sleeping dog, a symbol of fidelity and attentiveness, in the foreground as well as an opening with stalls and livestock, a not-so-thinly-veiled reference to their animalistic behaviour, in the background.
The contemporary success of these compositions is illustrated not merely by the number of sets and variants of individual panels by van Cleve and his workshop but by the fact that later artists, in particular Pieter Brueghel the Younger, took them up as well. Brueghel depicted The procession of the groom and Procession of the bride in two pairs of small, signed panels (Ertz, op. cit., 1988⁄2000, nos. E 807-E 810). Similarly, a variant of The blessing of the marital bed, albeit most closely related to a composition by van Cleve formerly in the Abresch collection, Neustadt, by the younger Brueghel is known (for van Cleve’s painting, see Ertz, op. cit., 2014, no. 175; for Brueghel’s, see Ertz, op. cit., 1988⁄2000, no. E 1016).
Marten van Cleve hailed from a family of artists who had moved to Antwerp from Cleves in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. He became a master in the Antwerp painters guild in 1551⁄2 and, according to Karel van Mander, followed his brother into the studio of Frans Floris around 1553-5. Marten apparently set up his own workshop shortly thereafter, which remained productive throughout the 1560s and 1570s. Its production concentrated on the creation of versions after van Cleve’s original compositions. Though a date of circa 1558-60 has often been mooted (see, for example, the various exhibitions held between 2012 and 2020), these compositions probably date to a somewhat later period on account of their association with van der Borcht's engraving of 1560 and the elder Bruegel’s painting in Vienna. While van Cleve’s output was strongly influenced by Bruegel – so much so that this set long bore an attribution to the greatest of all sixteenth-century Flemish masters while in the collection of the Freiherrn von Schütz-Leerodt at Schloss Leerodt – his reputation as a Bruegel follower is unjustified. Not only was van Cleve an exact contemporary of Bruegel, his compositions and subjects, as here, were devised independently.
The set is composed of (in)discreet, humorous episodes that follow chronologically on one another. In the first scene, the bridegroom – dressed in black and urged on by his companions – gestures hesitantly at the village church. His open cloak framing his genitals and his friend carrying a bow and arrow (the latter pointing to an open pail) both allude to his already pregnant bride, who is similarly guided by a music-making procession of family members in the second panel. In the third painting, the thick-nosed and red-cheeked characters – a thinly veiled allusion to their intemperance and simplicity – shower the bride, who reaches for a plate full of coins, with gifts from all directions. Van Cleve underscores his view of the scene by including the dog playing with a bone underneath the table and two urinating figures, a baby at lower left and man at far right. The subsequent wedding feast is staged at the same table, now draped in white linen with figures crammed even more tightly around it. The bride, seated and crowned, sits before a red hanging emblazoned with three additional crowns. Van Cleve’s staging of this scene probably derives from an etching by Pieter van der Borcht, dated 1560 (fig. 1), while the motif of two men carrying in the food at far left may suggest the artist’s awareness of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Wedding feast of 1567 (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). In Catholic countries in the period, it was a customary ritual on the wedding day to bless the marital bed, the subject of the fifth panel. In the centre of the composition, two female family members help to undress the unenthusiastic bride while the local priest blesses the bed at right as her intoxicated husband slumbers at a table by the doorway. In the seventeenth century, the composition was aptly known as ‘de schreyende bruyt’ (‘the crying bride’). The sixth and final painting here is unique within the three known autograph series and depicts the following morning, when the bride – who raises her hand to her face as she yawns – pushes her lover out of a window. In case there were any doubt about what transpired, van Cleve has included a sleeping dog, a symbol of fidelity and attentiveness, in the foreground as well as an opening with stalls and livestock, a not-so-thinly-veiled reference to their animalistic behaviour, in the background.
The contemporary success of these compositions is illustrated not merely by the number of sets and variants of individual panels by van Cleve and his workshop but by the fact that later artists, in particular Pieter Brueghel the Younger, took them up as well. Brueghel depicted The procession of the groom and Procession of the bride in two pairs of small, signed panels (Ertz, op. cit., 1988⁄2000, nos. E 807-E 810). Similarly, a variant of The blessing of the marital bed, albeit most closely related to a composition by van Cleve formerly in the Abresch collection, Neustadt, by the younger Brueghel is known (for van Cleve’s painting, see Ertz, op. cit., 2014, no. 175; for Brueghel’s, see Ertz, op. cit., 1988⁄2000, no. E 1016).
Marten van Cleve hailed from a family of artists who had moved to Antwerp from Cleves in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. He became a master in the Antwerp painters guild in 1551⁄2 and, according to Karel van Mander, followed his brother into the studio of Frans Floris around 1553-5. Marten apparently set up his own workshop shortly thereafter, which remained productive throughout the 1560s and 1570s. Its production concentrated on the creation of versions after van Cleve’s original compositions. Though a date of circa 1558-60 has often been mooted (see, for example, the various exhibitions held between 2012 and 2020), these compositions probably date to a somewhat later period on account of their association with van der Borcht's engraving of 1560 and the elder Bruegel’s painting in Vienna. While van Cleve’s output was strongly influenced by Bruegel – so much so that this set long bore an attribution to the greatest of all sixteenth-century Flemish masters while in the collection of the Freiherrn von Schütz-Leerodt at Schloss Leerodt – his reputation as a Bruegel follower is unjustified. Not only was van Cleve an exact contemporary of Bruegel, his compositions and subjects, as here, were devised independently.