Beskrivning: Se även beskrivning i den engelska versionen

Catalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 3: 

Technical notes: The painting’s support is an oak
panel (±0.5–0.7 mm thick), constructed of two horizontal
boards with horizontal grain. Dendrochronological
examination and analysis have determined a felling date
for the tree between c. 1613 and 1623. The wood originates
from the Baltic region. Under the assumption of a
median of 15 sapwood rings and a minimum of 2 years
for seasoning of the wood, the most plausible date for use
of the panel would be 1621 or later. The painting underwent
conservation treatment in 1924.

Provenance: Purchased in 1868.

Bibliography: Göthe 1887, p. 222 (as Johann Rottenhammer
and Jan Brueghel I?); Göthe 1893, p. 273;
Göthe 1910, p. 299; Peltzer 1916, p. 348 no. 66 (as
Johann Rottenhammer, the landscape in the Manner of
Jan Brueghel I); NM Cat. 1958, p. 174 (as Johann Rottenhammer
and Jan Brueghel I?); NM Cat. 1990, p. 313
(as manner of Johann Rottenhammer)

The painting depicts the Biblical story of King David
and Bathsheba (II Sam.11:2–17). One evening while
he walked on the roof of his palace David saw below
him a beautiful woman bathing. This was Bathsheba,
the wife of Uriah the Hittite, who was then away on
service in David’s army. In an act of seigniorial arrogance
he had her brought to the palace and made love
to her. She became pregnant as a consequence. David
sent Uriah away to die on the battlefield, after which
he was then able to marry Bathsheba. The beautiful
Bathsheba is depicted at her toilet as a messenger
arrives with a letter from King David, who is shown in
the background spying on her from the roof terrace of
his palace.

This painting entered the collection as a work of the
German painter Johann Rottenhammer, a native of
Munich who settled in Venice after a brief sojourn in
Rome (1593–1594), possibly with Jan Brueghel I. The
picture can be associated more correctly with the work
of Antwerp history painter Hendrick van Balen I,
working in collaboration with an artist from the studio
of Jan Brueghel I. A nearly identical same-size copy of
the present painting (it differs only in the rabbits in
the foreground on the right), possibly an autograph
replica, is in the collection of the Earl of Bradford at
Weston Park.1 Small differences between the two
paintings suggest that the panel in Stockholm was the
“principael” (i.e. the original, or first version).

Van Balen collaborated frequently with Jan Brueghel
I, his neighbour in the Lange Nieuwstraat at Antwerp,
from at least 1604 until the latter’s death in 1625. In
paintings jointly executed by the two artists, Van Balen
painted the figures and Brueghel contributed the landscape
background and still life elements. After his
friend’s death, Van Balen continued his collaboration
with his son Jan Brueghel II, who took over his father’s
studio in 1625. In the present painting, the hand of Jan
II can possibly be recognized in the gardens surrounding
King David’s palace with the finely detailed rendering
of the flora and fauna in the foreground. The shallow
pool encircled by a balustrade and the elaborate
fountain decorated by a putto straddling a dolphin are
somewhat reminiscent of the garden architecture in
the Venus at Her Bath (present whereabouts unknown),
a collaborative piece of c. 1625 ascribed to Van Balen
and Jan Brueghel II.2 Van Balen’s fleshy, solid and
somewhat stiffly posed figures added to the garden setting
of the present painting can be compared to works
from the last third of his career. The figure type represented
by Bathsheba can, for example, be compared to
the personification of the element of “Earth’ in his late
Allegory of Earth and Water at Potsdam (Schloss
Sanssouci, Staatliche Schlösser und Gärten, Bildergalerie).
3 The Stockholm painting can be dated, on the
basis of style, to the mid- to late 1620s, a date supported
by the recent dendrochronological examination of
the panel (see Technical Notes).

CF
1 Oil on wood, 47 x 63.5 cm, Weston Park (Shropshire), Coll. Earl of Bradford;
see a photograph on file at the RKD, The Hague (as Hendrick van
Balen I). Not listed in Werche 2004.
2 Oil on wood, 60 x 93 cm; see Ertz 1984, pp. 356–357 no. 191, illus. (as
follower of Hendrick van Balen I, the landscape by Jan Brueghel II,
1640s); and Werche 2004, p. 181, illus. (as Hendrick van Balen I, the
landscape by Jan Brueghel II, c. 1625).
3 Oil on wood, 61.5 x 94 cm, Potsdam, Schloss Sanssouci, Staatliche
Schlösser und Gärten, Bildergalerie, inv. no. GK I 7760; see Ertz 1984,
pp. 69, 367 no. 203, illus. (as Hendrick van Balen I, the landscape by Jan
Brueghel II, probably late 1620s); Werche 2004, p. 190 no. A 133, illus.
(c.1625/1632). But cf. also the figure of Venus in an earlier work such as
the Allegory of Fertility at Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, inv.
no. 22; for which see Werche 2004, p. 211 no. A 185, illus.
[End]

Batseba vid badet mottager brevet från kung David