Cornelis SCHUT (1597-1655) - Lot 7

Cornelis SCHUT (1597-1655) The Abduction of Europa. Canvas. 172 x 222 cm Old restorations, lifting and missing parts. Born in Antwerp, Schut is documented in Rome between 1624 and 1626, where he lived with several other Nordic artists in a house near Via Margutta in the Bentvueghels (a community of mainly Flemish Flemish and Dutch artists). His patron was the banker and art lover Vincenzo Giustiniani, who commissioned two large-scale religious compositions (Caen, Abbaye aux Dames). His style, with its sometimes marked shows the influence of Rubens, whose pupil he may have been, although there is no documentary evidence of this, but also of Stomer (Adoration of the Magi). Like Caravaggio twenty years earlier, following a murder he had to leave Rome and move to Florence, where he is mentioned in 1627-28. There, he designed tapestries for the Arazzeria Medicea, the most important tapestry factory in Italy, founded in Florence in 1546 by the Medici Grand Duke Cosimo I. His paintings can still be found in numerous churches in Antwerp, Brussels and Namur. Our painting is the culmination of a subject elaborated by Schut around 1636-38. We know of a small sketch preserved in Würzburg (Martin Von Wagner Museum), in which the essence of the composition is found, with numerous variants. numerous variants (Gertrude Wilmers Cornelis SCHUT (1597 - 1655): A Flemish Painter of the High baroque, Brepols 1996, cat. A28 p.92 ill.p.359). But the drawing that appeared in 2010 (sale Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Me Millon 8/12/2010, no. 63) provides an even better understanding of the genesis of this composition. The drawing, a true first thought in brown wash, is followed by the sketch (long attributed to Rubens in connection with the cycle of the Torre de la Parrada) followed by the large painting rediscovered here and reproduced for the first time, the culmination of a long creative process by a still little-known painter with a strong, original personality, perfectly free from the influence of Rubens.