Jan van Kessel the Elder and Abraham Willemsens

With Herbert Asenbaum, Vienna, 1966 (as Antwerp School);

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 13 December 1991, lot 156 (as School of Antwerp, circa 1600);

Where acquired by a private collector;

By whom sold ("Property from a Private Collection"), London, Sotheby's, 17 December 1998, lot 116 (as Antwerp School, circa 1660);

With Galerie d'Art Saint-Honoré, Paris, by 2002;

Anonymous sale, Zurich, Koller, 14 September 2015, lot 3031.

Munich, Haus der Kunst; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum-Fondation Corboud, Wettstreit der Künste: Malerei und Skulptur von Dürer bis Daumier, 1 February - 25 August 2002, no. 168 (lent by Galerie d'Art Saint-Honoré).

G. Martin, "Abraham Willemsens (again): More news of attributions in Flemish painting," in Apollo (February 1993), pp. 99-101, reproduced fig. 10;

K. Wettengl, in Wettstreit der Künste: Malerei und Skulptur von Dürer bis Daumier, exhibition catalogue, E. Mai and K. Wettengl (eds.), Munich/Cologne 2002, pp. 385-386, cat. no. 168, reproduced;

F. Wappenschmidt, "Ästhetischer Stil-Mix," in Weltkunst 9 (September 2004), p. 26, reproduced fig. 1;

K. Ertz and C. Nitze-Ertz, Die Maler Jan van Kessel, Lingen 2012, pp. 121, 380, cat. no. 686, reproduced.

This richly orchestrated kunstkamer epitomizes the Flemish fascination with collecting, connoisseurship, and visual knowledge in mid-seventeenth-century Antwerp. Conceived as an Allegory of Sight, the composition unfolds as a dazzling inventory of paintings, sculptures, scientific instruments, precious objects, and naturalia, all arranged within an elegant interior that opens, at right, onto a river landscape with a city on the horizon beyond. The prominence of optical devices, globes, and pictures within pictures underscores sight as both a sensory faculty and an intellectual pursuit, aligning the cabinet with contemporary ideals of encyclopedic learning and visual discernment.

The imagery includes numerous quotations after celebrated masters. In the upper left above the doorway, the vignette of an old man and woman derives from a composition by David Teniers II, known through the example in the National Gallery (inv. no. 1992.27.1). At upper right, the chickens recall The Henhouse by Frans Snyders, a composition recorded in the Real Alcázar of Madrid in 1666 (now in the Museo del Prado, inv. no.

P001770), while the fox hunt scene likewise depends on a Snyders prototype, La gata y el zorro, also in the Prado (inv. no. P001755). At the far left, Christ Healing the Blind introduces an explicit emblem of sight restored, reinforcing the allegorical program of the whole.

This painting is the producted of a collaboration between Jan van Kessel the Elder, celebrated for his refined cabinet pictures and still-life passages, and Abraham Willemsens. According to Gregory Martin, Willemsens contributed the sculptures and the figures of Juno and the putto. Together, the artists created a learned and visually sumptuous meditation on the pleasures of looking—an image that simultaneously celebrates Antwerp’s artistic culture and invites the viewer to participate in the discerning eye of the collector.