Beskrivning: Se även beskrivning i den engelska versionen

Catalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 19: 

Technical notes: The painting’s original support
consists of two pieces of densely woven, plain weave,
medium-weight fabric, resp. 119.8 cm (left) and 115.0
cm (right) wide, sewn with a vertical seam near centre.
The original fabric support has been lined and was
mounted on a non-original stretcher in 1955. The original
tacking edges have been cropped on all sides. Cusping
is visible along the left and right edges. Three tears
in the original fabric support in the sky at the upper left
and near centre, resp. 10 cm, 20 cm and 38 cm long,
have been repaired; another repair, in the form of a 3 x 5
cm patch, occurs at the bottom of the canvas at left of
centre.

The preparatory layers consist of a whiteish ground
followed by a grey imprimatura visible only along the
contours of some of the animals, for example, the eagle
at the lower left.

Paint is applied thickly in mostly opaque layers, with
vigorous brushwork in the birds’ plumage and rich
impastos in the heron’s white feathers and in the white or
bright yellow highlights on the falcon’s claws, around
their beaks and on the coiled snake at the lower right.
The painting is generally in good condition. A layer of
slightly discoloured old varnish is present. The paint layers
have become flattened and the weave structure of the
fabric support has become visible on the painting’s surface
as a result of the lining process. Retouching covers
abrasion and extensive flaked losses of paint and ground
layers along the edges. The painting underwent conservation
treatment in 1955 and 1997.

Provenance: Karl XI, Kungsör; Gustav III 1791/1792;
KM 1804, no. 166; KM 1816, no. 605.

Bibliography: NM Cat. 1867, p. 46 (as Frans Snyders);
Sander IV, p. 74 no. 166 (as copy, possibly after
Frans Snyders); Göthe 1887, pp. 247-248 (as copy after
Frans Snyders?); Göthe 1893, p. 303 (as copy after Frans
Snyders?); Göthe 1900, p. 313; Granberg 1929–31, III,
pp. 179–180 (citing article by Lucas von Breda in Stockholmsposten,
“Et stort Fogelstycke af Snyders, innehållande
en Örn, whilken spänt en Häger”, with the author’s
comment “not by Snyders, but probably by Peeter
Boel”); NM Cat. 1958, p. 187 (as workshop of Frans
Snyders); Robels 1989, p. 467 no. A 218 (as falsely attributed
to Frans Snyders).

In the centre of this picture, a large eagle, having captured
a heron perches triumphantly on its prey, with
spread wings and open beak, jealously guarding it
against a second eagle on the right, high on the branch
of an oak tree, poised to attack. Simultaneous with this
encounter are two others: a confrontation between an
eagle and a serpent and a life and death struggle
between a peregrine falcon and a heron. The eagle on
the left, thus, focuses its attention on a writhing snake
that emerges from its lair in the right foreground,
roused from its hiding place by the nearby tumult.
And in the background, at the upper left, a falcon
attacks a heron in mid-air.

This painting entered the collections of the
Nationalmuseum as a work by animal- and still life
painter Frans Snyders or his workshop and was considered
as such until its present reattribution to the
Antwerp artist Pieter Boel, following a suggestion by
Robels.1 Boel, who is best known for his hunting
scenes and still lifes of dead birds in the tradition of his
reputed teachers, Frans Snyders and Jan Fyt, rarely
signed or dated his work, making it difficult to 
establish a chronology. Several of his paintings were later
misattributed to the better known artists Snyders and
Fyt. The present painting is a variant version of a
painting by Boel formerly in Frankfurt (Städelsches
Kunstinstitut),2 which was reproduced, in reverse, by
the artist himself as part of a set of six original etchings
of birds, titled Diversi uccelli.3 The confrontation
between the two eagles in the present painting and the
third eagle in profile on the left, are identical to those
in Boel’s Frankfurt painting, in which the prey is now a
roebuck instead of a heron. The eagle in the oak tree
at the upper right recurs in a different composition
attributed to Boel, showing a confrontation between
an eagle and a fox, that was on the British art market in
1989.4 Like some of Boel’s animal- and hunting
scenes, the present painting shows a clear debt to Snyders.
The eagle that perches triumphantly on its prey
was clearly inspired by that in a painting by Snyders of
the early 1620s, The Eagles and the Dead Wolf (Paris,
Maison de la Chasse et de la Nature).5 Snyders’ eagle,
in turn, was probably inspired by a famous antique
marble, the Capitoline Eagle, which Rubens had also
copied in a drawing of c. 1601 (formerly New York,
Coll. Emile E. Wolf).6 The emblematic motif of an
eagle attacking a heron in mid-air, in the background
of the present painting, occurs in identical fashion in
another etching from the set of Diversi uccelli, probably
inspired by a lost composition by Snyders.7 Like
Snyders’ work, Boel’s compositions tend to be quieter
than those of Fyt. His handling of plumage and fur is
generally tighter and less brushy than Fyt’s and often
looks almost graphic compared to Fyt’s more painterly
approach.

Boel’s Diversi uccelli includes several scenes of violent
confrontation involving birds of prey, falcons, eagles
and hawks, a motif that also occurs in the work of Snyders.
8 Discussing Snyders’ The Eagles and the Dead
Wolf, which depicts similar encounters between eagles,
snakes and weasels, Robels observed that the scene
calls to mind the proverb “as it is in the wild wood,
where one eats or is eaten, so it is in this world”.9The
eagle has numerous symbolic associations, most of
them positive. It was the bird of apotheosis and resurrection,
hence a symbol of Christ, a symbol of military
power and “representative of majesty, victory, and
courage”.10 On Roman coinage, the deified Emperor
appeared above the eagle of Jupiter, and when an
Emperor was cremated an eagle was released to transport
his soul heavenwards. The eagle’s association with
kingship rests in part on its traditional identification as
the king of birds. It is not surprising, therefore, that the
eagle appears in heraldry, including imperial arms.
Beginning with Augustus, thus, Roman Emperors used
the eagle to symbolize supreme power. The iconography
of an eagle struggling with a serpent was studied at
length by Wittkower, who traced the motif from its
first appearance in ancient Mesopotamian art.11 Given
its richly developed iconography, there can be little
doubt that the confrontation of the eagle and the snake
is allegorical, and that it conveys the idea of victory
over evil, be it in the realm of the spiritual or the political.
12 Noting the eagle’s association with kingship,
Koslow interpreted Snyders’ painting as, in part, a
political allegory, alluding to Habsburg rule.13

CF

1 Oral communication dated 8 July 1988 in the NM curatorial files. And cf.
Robels 1989. Granberg (1929–1931) was, however, the first scholar to
make a tentative attribution to Boel in print (vol. III, p. 179 n. 3).
2 Oil on canvas, 148.0 x 240.0 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, inv. no. 224
(Cat. 1924), see photo on file at the RKD, The Hague.
3 See Bartsch, IV, p. 202; Hollstein, III, p. 57; repro. in The Illus. Bartsch,
4 Oil on canvas, 165 x 229.5 cm, sold, London, Sotheby’s, 19 April 1989, lot
147, see photo on file at the RKD, The Hague.
5 Oil on canvas, 164.0 x 238.0 cm, Paris, Maison de la Chasse et de la
Nature, inv. no. 71-I-I; for which see Robels 1989, cat. no. 209, repr.
6 For Rubens’ drawing, see Jaffé 1977, p. 81L, fig. 267.
7 For the print, see Bartsch, IV, p. 201; Hollstein, III, p. 57; repro. The
Illus. Bartsch, V, p. 191. Cf. a painting attributed to Boel depicting this
motif in the Coll. of Count Philippe of Limburg Stirum, Ansegem (Belgium)
in 1954, for which see the photo on file at the RKD, The Hague.
For Snyders’ lost painting, see above under no. 188.
8 For the Diversi uccelli, see Bartsch, IV, pp. 201–203, repro. in The Illustrated
Bartsch, V, 191, 192, 195. For Snyders, see Robels 1989, cat.nos.
208, 209, V46, V47.
9 See Hans Marcus, Niederländische Sprichwörter des 17. Jahrhunderts (Kat.
XVII), Düsseldorf 1974/1975, no. 165; and Jacob Cats, Spiegel, in De Wercken
van Jacob Cats, ed. J. van Vloten, Zwolle (repr., Groningen, n.d.), p.
186, both cited by Robels 1989, under cat. no. 209.
10 Rowland 1978, p. 165.
11 Wittkower 1977, pp. 16–44. According to Wittkower, the motif became
current in Christian art in the 6th and 7th centuries, reaching its apogee
in the 12th and 13th centuries. Exegetes, following the Pseudo-Ambrose’s
interpretation of the struggle, explained it as a simile for Christ’s victory
over Satan. This meaning was transferred to secular contexts when
princes and other lay persons in the 16th and 17th centuries appropriated
the motif. The image of an eagle triumphing over a serpent also acquired
the significance of victory in general. Rulers in the 16th century issued
medals with the motif to signify their political authority or to memorialize
a military victory.
12 Cf. Ulisse Aldrovandi, Ornithologiae, Bologna 1599–1603, bk. I, II, pp.
17–234, for the eagle and other raptors, and bk. I, pp. 44–46, for the
eagle’s antipathy to serpents [draco].
13 See Koslow 1995, pp. 313–315. [End]

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