The son of the merchant Jan Vrancx and his wife Barbara Couterau, Sebastiaen Vrancx was baptized in Antwerp on 22 January 1573. [1] According to Karel van Mander (1548-1606), Vrancx was a pupil of the history painter Adam van Noort (1562-1641), who also taught Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). Vrancx spent the latter half of the 1590’s in Rome, where he belonged to the circle of the influential Flemish-Roman master Paul Bril (c. 1554-1626), whose style Vrancx initially adopted. Bril no doubt stimulated Vrancx to make drawings after Rome’s antique ruins; drawings that later served as templates for the production of his paintings. Upon his return to Antwerp in 1601, Vrancx became a master of the Guild of St. Luke, of which he was appointed dean in 1612. Soon a key figure in Antwerp’s artistic circles, Vrancx was made a member of the distinguished society of the Fraternity of SS Peter and Paul – of which, among others, Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) and Rubens were also members – in 1610 Likewise, he was actively involved in De Violieren, the famous Antwerp chamber of rhetoric, to which he often contributed poems and plays. The same year that he was appointed dean of the guild, Vrancx married Maria Pamphi, the daughter of an art dealer and sister-in-law of the painter Tobias Verhaecht (1561-1631). From 1621 until 1631, Vrancx was a captain of the Antwerp Civic Guard of the Fencers. Vrancx regularly collaborated with other artists and provided staffage for, among others,  Joos de Momper the Younger (1564-1735), Jan Brueghel the Elder, Pieter Neefs the Elder (c. 1578-after 1656) and Frans Francken the Younger (1581-1642). The artist’s portrait was engraved after a design by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) for the latter’s Iconography series of prominent men of the day. Vrancx’ diverse production ranges from neatly executed histories to genre works, landscapes, village scenes, architectural pieces, allegoriesand battle scenes, in which he strut his preference for depicting horses.

 

The present Roman Capriccio, a new addition to the oeuvre of Sebastiaan Vrancx, is a fine example of the artist’s continued implementation of his Roman material, long after his return to the North. Presumably painted in Antwerp c. 1620 [2], our work depicts an intimate view of a Roman campo with, to the left, antique ruins, houses and trees, over which golden sunrays light up the landscape. Separated by a bare tree (note the clearly visible pentimenti in the tree’s branches, which initially extended much further) and a puddle with ducks behind it, the right side of the composition offers a stretched wall with a fountain and an entrance gate further ahead. On the other side of the gate broad stairs lead up to a stately Italian villa surrounded by a lush garden with pergolas. Echoing Roman palazzos such as the Villa Medici, the building oversees the composition. In the distance the campo is limited by an obelisk and another gate, behind which we see the contour of an antique building, seemingly the Santa Maria della Febbre (built as a mausoleum in the third century AD) or the Vesta temple in the Forum Boarium. 

 

By adding a variety of staffage Vrancx created a lively street scene. To the left two women and a baby find shade among the ruins, while in the right foreground a horse carriage transporting a fashionable lady dominates the scene. A pretzel seller approaches the carriage and a woman fills a jug at the fountain, while a man, wholly unconcerned, urinates against the wall. A third little narrative takes place at the villa’s entrance gate, where a man accompanied by a boy greets a lady holding an ostrich feather fan by gallantly bowing before her.

 

While the present composition is not a depiction of an actual Roman square, Vrancx surely had similar vistas in mind when executing the work. His View of the Piazza del Popolo with the Pincio Hill Behind, part of his Roman sketchbook kept in the Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth House, shows a comparable view of Rome, with a gated wall, the Villa Medici with its lush gardens rising above it, and an obelisk, a fountain and carriages with further staffage on the central square. [3] In fact, the Chatsworth sketchbook formed an ongoing touchstone, and Vrancx directly cited from it in the painting under discussion. The antique ruins serving as the repoussoir on the left were adopted from Ruins of the Temple of the Tiburtine Cibyl at Tivoli, while the buildings behind it are loosely recycled from the View of the Palazzo Quirinale, dated 1602. The arched brick structure on the right of the villa turns out to be taken from yet another Chatsworth drawing, Ruins on the Palatine. Vrancx thus created new imagery by recycling and rearranging motifs that he had previously recorded in his Roman sketchbooks, and elsewhere.

 

Noteworthy in this respect, specifically with regards to our Roman Capriccio, is Vrancx’ Capriccio of the Campo Vaccino, Rome, With Elegant Company and Peasants, with Christie’s London in 2007 (sale 27 April 2007, lot 16). This larger panel depicts a strikingly similar Roman square, with the same ruins of the Temple of the Tiburtine Cibyl, again positioned as a repoussoir to the left. In the far distance we recognize the broad gate, and to the right we find the same wall with a near-identical fountain, and a villa on a hill surrounded by a garden behind it. Other pictorial elements, before all the Colosseum to the right and the antique ruins at the center of the composition (the Nymphaeum of Aqua Julia, similarly found in one of the Chatsworth drawings), lack in our work. A pretzel seller, on the other hand, is again present. He proves to be a stock figure in Vrancx’ Roman capriccios, featuring in drawings, prints and paintings alike. The man gallantly bowing before the lady with the feather fan, lastly, is another often-found motif in Vrancx’ work. We find this duo, for instance, in his depiction of Spring, where they take on center space, again before an entrance gate.

 

 

END NOTES

 

[1] Biography based on J. vander Auwera, in: J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 36 vols., New York 1996, 32, pp. 722-724; A. Keersmaekers, ‘De schilder Sebastiaen Vrancx (1573-1647) als rederijker’, in: Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen 1982, pp. 165-186.

 

[2] We kindly thank Sebastiaan Vrancx expert Dr. Joos vander Auwera for his endorsement of the attribution to Vrancx, on the basis of hi-res photographs. Dr. Vander Auwera dates the painting to c. 1620.

 

[3] See M. Jaffé, ‘A Second Roman Sketchbook of Sebastiaen Vrancx at Chatsworth’, in: idem., The Devonshire collection of northern European drawings, 5 vols., Turin 2002, 2 (Flemish Artists), pp. 250-305, p. 291, cat. no. 1312. See further on this topic: M. Jaffé, ‘The Roman Sketchbook of Sebastian Vrancx in Chatsworth’, in: E. Mai, K. Schütz, H. Vlieghe, Die Malerei Antwerpens : Gattungen, Meister, Wirkungen : Studien zur flämischen Kunst des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts : Internationales Kolloquium Wien 1993, Cologne 1995, pp. 194-205