Allegory of Fire (Emblems of War)

Artist/Maker

Material / Technique

Dimensionsh x w: Mått 19 x 25 cm h x w x d: Ram 29 x 36 x 5 cm

Inventory numberNM 1082

Other titlesTitle (sv): Krigiska emblem Title (en): Allegory of Fire (Emblems of War) Previous: Emblems of War

DescriptionCatalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 111: Technical notes: The support consists of a plate of copper about 0.5 cm in thick. The verso has been painted with a dark opaque brownish-red paint layer. There is a barely legible inscription. The preparation consists of a dark, thin, opaquely applied layer that is covered by a pale thin greyish layer. Underdrawing is partly visible under the lizard in the foreground and seems to have been executed in a wet medium. The paint layer consists of several thinly and opaquely applied layers. The sky has been rendered with clear and forceful brushstrokes with a heavily loaded brush and is coarser when compared to no. 110 and with clearer demarcation between the sky and the trees. The foreground and background comprise simply painted countryside. The trees and bushes in the background have been painted over the sky. The helmet (at the left) and cannon balls have been painted over the foreground. The military emblems have been rendered in detail and with great precision. The red fabric around the drums is composed of opaque red underpainting with madder glazes in the shadows and pink tones where the folds stand out. The armour is also painted from dark to light. The palette consists of earth colours, blue and red pigments with accents and highlights in white. The painting underwent conservation treatment in 1870 and 1936. Provenance: Coll. Count Oxenstierna, Stockholm; purchased 1843 by Axel Gabriel Bielke, Stockholm, 1843–1869; donation to the NM in 1869. Bibliography: NM Cat. 1869, Suppl., p. 76 (as Jan van Kessel I); Göthe 1887, p. 130 (as Jan van Kessel I); Göthe 1910, p. 181; Granberg 1911–1913, I, p. 83; Greindl 1956, p. 177 (as Jan van Kessel I); NM Cat. 1958, p. 103 (as Jan van Kessel I); Greindl 1983, p. 368 no. 133 (as Jan van Kessel I); NM Cat. 1990, p. 187. An allegorical depiction of a variety of forms of fire, represented by the array of pieces of steel armour and weapons in the foreground – objects that refer to the element of fire through the processes involved in their making – by the flames rising from buildings set afire in the left background and by the pair of fire salamanders (Salamandra salamandra) next to the saddle in the centre foreground. According to the medieval bestiary the salamander, a small amphibious creature resembling a lizard, was not only impervious to fire but had the power to extinguish flames, a belief recorded earlier by both Aristotle and Pliny. It is hence an attribute of Fire personified, one of the “Four Elements” of earth, air, fire and water. The most important place in the composition, however, is occupied by the military still life items: a cannon, cannonballs, kegs of gunpowder; elegant pistols and ammunition; plumed helmets, polished breast-plates, an arm-piece and a rondache shield; a saddle for a soldier’s mount; and attributes of military music – kettle-drums. Another highly original composition by Jan van Kessel, this painting is a simplified variant – presenting a more close-up viewpoint, containing fewer still life objects and a different landscape setting – of a composition by the artist known in two slightly differing autograph versions, both painted on small format copper panels, one formerly in Utrecht (Centraal Museum),1 the other on the New York art market in 2001.2 A close variant of the same basic composition, this one dated 1662, attributed by Meijer to the artist’s circle, was on the British art market in 1996.3 Several pieces of armour and other objects – the polished breast-plate, plumed helmet, arm-piece and shield; the drums; the pistols; the saddle – recur in other compositions by Van Kessel, sometimes in similar arrangements, but more often rearranged. Compare, for example, the signed Venus at the Forge of Vulcan (Allegory of Fire) of 1662 in St. Petersburg (The State Hermitage Museum).4 Though none are known today, when composing these still life elements Van Kessel may well have relied on drawn studies of individual pieces of armour, tools and other objects. He delighted in meticulously described surfaces and in contrasting volumes, creating a visual counterpoint of protrusions and recesses in the foreground pile of accoutrements. This finely executed little cabinet piece painted on a small copper plate, brilliantly hued and filled with miniaturist detail, is typical of the artist’s production during the 1650s and 1660s. Allegories of the “Four Elements” were part of the Netherlandish pictorial tradition, popularized in the late 16th century through print series.5 In these series the elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, were represented either as the traditional anonymous female personifications distinguished only by their attributes, or, especially in the 16th century, as classical gods and goddesses. In his depiction of the element of fire in the form of allegorical scenes representing the interior of Vulcan’s forge, Van Kessel resorted to examples he had seen previously in the Brueghel workshop. The St. Petersburg Venus at the Forge of Vulcan (Allegory of Fire) of 1662, thus, finds prototypes in similar compositions by Jan Brueghel I, such as the Allegory of Fire of c. 1608–1610 in Rome (Galleria Doria Pamphilj), cavernous interiors with the allegorical figures of Vulcan – the god of fire and metalworking – hammering out the shield of Aeneas on an anvil, observed by Venus and Cupid, and with dazzling arrays of small-scale still life objects, including military paraphernalia, strewn across the floor.6 However, in having the element of fire be represented simply by still life items of fire’s products, as in the present picture and related works, Van Kessel transformed the symbolic vocabulary of these scenes and shows himself to be a true innovator of the genre.7 The military equipment and musical instruments in these pictures may have been borrowed from the guardrooms of his uncle, David Teniers II.8 The image of the fire salamander, probably the bestknown salamander species in Europe, is a common motif in 17th century Flemish painting.9 CF 1 Jan van Kessel I, The Four Elements: Fire (Apotheosis of War), oil on copper, 20 x 29.5 cm, signed “I.V.KESSEL F.”, formerly Utrecht, Centraal Museum (sold in 1981); see a photograph on file at the RKD, The Hague. 2 Jan van Kessel I, Allegory of War (Landscape with a Still Life of Arms and Armour), oil on copper, 25 x 32.2 cm, signed “I.VAN KESSEL. FECIT”, sale, New York, Christie’s, 26 January 2001, lot 12; see a photograph on file at the RKD, The Hague. 3 Circle of Jan van Kessel I, Still Life of Arms and Armour, oil on wood, 19 x 24.9 cm, illegible monogram, dated “1662”, sale, London, Phillips, 10 December 1996, lot 106; see a photograph on file at the RKD, The Hague. 4 Oil on canvas, 59.5 x 84 cm, signed and dated “1662”, St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, inv. no. GE 1709; see Gritsay and Babina 2008, pp. 165–166 no. 221, repr. in colour. 5 See, for example, Frans Floris, The Elements, c. 1568; for which see Van de Velde 1975, I, pp. 422–423 nos. P103–106. 6 Jan Brueghel I and Hendrick van Balen I, Allegory of Fire, oil on wood, 53.8 x 94.3 cm, Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphilj, inv. no. 332; for which see Ertz 1979, pp. 364, 368, 369, 372, 599 no. 251, fig. 442; and Los Angeles/The Hague 2006, pp. 140–145, repr. in colour. Jan Brueghel I had first undertaken such allegorical subjects in Antwerp during the first years of the 17th century. His Allegory of Fire of 1606 in Lyon (Musée des Beaux-Arts) may have been conceived as an independent panel. In 1608 he then painted the Allegory of Fire (Milan, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, oil on wood, 46 x 66 cm, inv. no.68), for Cardinal Borromeo. Perhaps as a result of the success of this panel, Brueghel subsequently created a series of the Four Elements, painting three additional panels for Borromeo, with allegorical figures by Van Balen, completing the group in 1621. See Ertz 1979, pp. 374, 589, no. 190. 7 Cf. several small format “cabinet pieces” representing the same theme in the form of still life arrangements of luxury metal objects, glass and ceramics – gold chalices, beakers, silver patens, tapers – and braziers spread out in the foreground of landscapes with burning houses in the background: see a signed example, oil on wood, 27.7 x 37.5 cm, sale, New York, Christie’s, 12 January 1996, lot 179; see a photograph on file at the RKD, The Hague. 8 As suggested by Gritsay in Gritsay and Babina 2008, p. 165 (under no. 220). Compare, for example, David Teniers II, Guardroom, signed and dated “1642”, St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, inv. no. GE 583, see ibid, pp. 360–361 no. 435, repr. in colour; or a Guardroom in Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. no. 1812 (as Abraham Teniers), see Díaz Padrón 1995, II, p. 1342, repr. in colour on p. 1343. 9 It is prominently represented in the foreground of The Head of the Medusa (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no. 3834) by Peter Paul Rubens and Frans Snyders, and in Paul de Vos’ representation of Paradise (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum).[End]

Exhibited

Collection

MaterialOil paint, Copper (Metal)

TechniquePainting

Object category