FRANS FRANCKEN THE YOUNGER (1581-1642) - Receive artist alerts » - More items from this artist »

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Oil on panel

Signed on the barrel: D° FFRANCK / IN ET F

117.00cm wide    83.00cm high    (46.06 inches wide  32.68 inches high)

Schönborn collection, Pommersfelden; Anon. Sale, Sotheby’s, Monaco, 6 December 1987, lot 31; Private Collection, Monaco.

The subject of this work is the Seven Acts of Christian Charity. As listed by Matthew (5: 35-41), they are: feed the hungry; give water to the thirsty; give shelter to strangers; clothe the naked; heal the sick; visit the captive; and lastly bury the dead (which Matthew does not mention). In the Colnaghi-Bernheimer picture it is the first of these – feeding the hungry – that is given prominence by the artist, represented here with the distribution of bread by a wealthy couple. Francken’s great talent as a figurative artist is evident here in the sheer wealth of figural types and the confident lively brushwork used to describe their varied expressions.

Francken painted a number of different versions of the theme (see U. Härting, Frans Francken II, Freren, 1989, nos. 268-274). Each is a different composition with often quite distinct figural groupings - testament to the artist’s powers of invention. The church in our work recurs in the version in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldegalerie, Munich (Harting, op. cit., no. 273).

The most important member of a family of artists, Frans Francken the Younger specialised in small cabinet pictures. Essentially a figurative artist, he often collaborated with specialist landscape and architectural artists such as Josse de Momper the Younger and Pieter Neeffs. He was presumably a student of his father, but probably also trained in Paris with his uncle Hieronymous I. In 1605 Frans became a master of in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke. He soon showed the innovative approach to subject matter that was to characterize his oeuvre, inventing the theme of the ‘monkey’s kitchen’ and developing the genre of Kunstkammern and picture galleries. In the 1620s his early palette of green, olives and red-brown tones was replaced by a brighter, cooler spectrum, and the following decade his use of thick impasto gave way to a preference for more liquid, translucent glazes. From c. 1621 – the year of his father’s death – he sometimes signed works D o Franck, that is Francken the Elder, and on this basis our work, which is signed in this way, can be dated to after this time.