Beskrivning: Se även beskrivning i den engelska versionen

Catalogue 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]

Utforska konstnärer och föremål som finns i Nationalmuseums samlingar.

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Jan Kessel d.ä. | Krigiska emblem | Nationalmuseum

Jan Kessel d.ä. | Allegory of Fire (Emblems of War) | Nationalmuseum

Foto: Erik Cornelius / Nationalmuseum 2009