Allegory of War and Peace by Antoon Sallaert

Antoon Sallaert
Brussels 1594 – 1650

Allegory of War and Peace

 

Black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash and gouache on three assembled sheets of paper
482 x 815 mm (19 x 32 1/16 in.)

Antoon Sallaert was a painter, printmaker and draughtsman born in Brussels. His training with Michel de Bordeaux is documented, in particular, by the record of his admittance as an apprentice to the Brussels painters’ guild on 14 April 1606. He was made a master on 20 August 1613 and elected doyen four times.1  He enrolled students to the guild himself, including his brother Melchior and his son Jean. As a history painter, Sallaert executed several commissions for the court of Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella, although he was never appointed official court painter. He also received many commissions from the local Jesuit churches. Among the most important was that received in 1647 from the clergy of the church of Notre-Dame d’Alsemberg to paint a series of eleven compositions on the history of the church and its benefactors. Sallaert was prolific in several fields. For the prosperous textile industry, he made over 27 tapestry designs, that is, at least 120 cartoons, whereas in the field of printmaking, he provided numerous designs for engraved frontispieces and book illustrations to such engravers as Cornelis Galle the Elder and Christoffel Jegher, both of whom collaborated with Rubens.
His own prints are rather modest in number (about 23 pieces) but very innovative as it is to Sallaert that we owe the monotype technique which he began to explore in the 1640s, that is, a few years earlier than Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione who is traditionally considered its inventor.2 . In his monotypes, just like in his drawings, Sallaert combined soft strokes, which he used to accurately define outlines and shadows, with recurrent use of paper reserve. The visual effect but also the gesture of this monotype technique is very similar to those used in his drawings and oils on paper. Like for the latter, he sometimes used heightening with white gouache for his monotypes in order to emphasize light effects. This manner of working reveals his predilection for high contrast graphic techniques.

Ancient and especially nineteenth-century sources present him as a pupil and even collaborator of Rubens3 . However there seems to be no evidence of Sallaert’s association with Rubens. On the other hand, the Brussels painter undeniably drew inspiration from the Antwerp master for the development of his pictorial style, in particular acquiring the same penchant for the technique of oil on paper, grisaille and “brunaille” according to the term proposed by Jacques Foucarts.4 . This influence, however, may have been transmitted indirectly, for example, by Gaspard de Crayer. This Antwerp painter who moved to Brussels was made master of the guild of painters of this city in 1607, elected doyen in 1614 and acted as a propagator of Rubens’s art.

The present drawing, spectacular in size, condition and draughtsmanship, is as a matter of fact a composition after Rubens, according to the inscription on a print of Remoldus Eynhoudts (1613-1680) in the British Museum which repeats this composition. Its subject is allegorical: Peace, being crowned by Victory, keeps at bay the Fury of War with its caduceus, while her daughters Harmony, Justice, and Abundance stand around her. Putti gather fruit abundantly falling from the horn held by Abundance, while Mercury, guarantor of the flourishing trade, plays the lute, seated on the far left. This allegory should be examined in the context of the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia negotiated in 1648.

Fig.1

The composition was so successful that it reappeared in some versions, most of which of rather mediocre quality and considerably less spectacular than Sallaert’s work. To mention the most important, a version attributed to Pieter van Avont and Frans Wouters in the Musée Crozatier in Puy-en-Velay, another one attributed to Guilliam Forchondt, which appeared on sale with its pendant of the subject of good government (Sotheby’s, London, 10 July 2008) and, finally, the one of the circle of Jan van den Hoecke (Christie’s, South Kensington, 7 December 2012)5 . After the end of the Thirty Years War and the Eighty Years War, peace was widely celebrated and such compositions were certainly in high demand for the decoration of official buildings and the houses of important families. Max Rooses evokes “souvenirs of Rubens’s works” with regards to a picture of the same composition which he attributes to Erasme Quellinus. Aside the figure of Abundance, deriving from that of the Virgin in the masterpiece belonging to the Antwerp Royal Museum of Fine Arts, two other connections that Rooses makes, that is, the slaves and Mercury were not, strictly speaking, borrowed from the master. While the atmosphere is Rubenian, it is possible that the composition was executed by an artist who knew and employed the models of the Antwerp master but did not directly belong to his workshop. Along with the version given to Guilliam Forchondt (which has a pendant, An Allegory of Good Government, lot 141; both oils on copper, 52 x 74 cm), Sallaert’s work is one of the most natural and beautiful versions of this composition. It naturally fits into the space of the sheet: unlike in the other versions, Mercury here, seated on the left, does not seem to lack space, and at his feet, the artist drew bags of gold and other attributes which do not appear elsewhere. Blossoming bushes behind the god of commerce is another of his inventions. On the other side of the composition, the prisoners are placed in front of a heap of arms and banners represented in detail. Even if the artist copied after Rubens or another model, he did not lose the spontaneity and did not hesitate to add details of his choice and reinvent parts of the composition with ingenuity and skill. He may have intended to employ it in tapestry.

  1. Alexandre Pinchart, « La corporation des peintres de Bruxelles », Messager des sciences historiques, ou Archive des arts et de la bibliographie de Belgique, vol. 1877, p. 289-331. ↩︎
  2. Todd D. Weyman, « Two Early Monotypes by Sallaert », Print Quarterly, vol. 12, n° 2 (juin 1995), p. 164-169. ↩︎
  3. Adolphe Siret, Dictionnaire historique des peintres de toutes les écoles depuis l’origine de la peinture jusqu’à nos jours […], Paris, Lacroix et Cie, 1874, p. 825. ↩︎
  4. Jacques Foucart, « Alexandre et Diogène, une grisaille d’Anthoni Sallarts », Bulletin des amis du Musée de Rennes, 4, 1980, p. 8-16. ↩︎
  5. Une liste non exhaustive des différentes versions peintes et dessinées est établie par Hans-Ulrich Beck dans « Netherlandish Drawings in the Städtische Kunstsammlungen, Augsburg », Master Drawings, volume 39, n° 4, 2001, p. 402-403. ↩︎
  6. Max Rooses, Rubens, sa vie et ses œuvres, Paris, Flammarion, 1903, n° 824. Selon lui, la Justice (il s’agit en réalité de l’Abondance) est empruntée à la figure de Marie dans L’Éducation de la Vierge (Anvers, Musée royal des beaux-arts), les captifs à ceux représentés dans les Funérailles de Decius (Vienne, palais Liechtenstein) et le Mercure à celui de L’Éducation de Marie de Médicis. ↩︎

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