Frederick van Valckenborch

Acquired in Vienna circa 1900;

Thence by descent for two generations;

Until anonymously sold ('Property from a Private Collection'), London, Sotheby's, 7July 2011, lot 159, for £73,250;

Where acquired by the present owner.

The account of Belshazzar's Feast, Book of Daniel, chapter 5, narrates the events leading up to the fall of Babylonian power, as the city fell to the Medes and Persians in 539 B.C. King Belshazzar, the successor of Nebuchadnezzar, hosted a lavish banquet for thousands of nobles in Bablyon. During the feast, he ordered for the gold and silver vessels, which had been seized from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, to be brought in and filled with wine, thus mocking the God of Israel. Suddenly, a mysterious hand appeared and wrote a message on the wall of the royal palace, as can be observed in the present painting, upper centre: MANE THECEL, / PHARES! (God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end; You have been weighed [...] and found wanting; Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians). That very night, Belshazzar was slain and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom.

Another treatment of the subject, which has traditionally been attributed to Valckenborch, is today in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.¹ Both works are marked by strong diagonals and a steep recession towards the background. As is typical of Valckenborch's work, the foregrounds are busy and the figures are marked by a late-Mannerist attention to form.

¹ Inv. no. 2333, 150 x 203.5 cm.; https://www.khm.at/en/artworks/gastmahl-des-koenig-belsazar-1984-1.