Studio of Peter Paul Rubens

(Siegen 1577–1640 Antwerp)
Venus disarming Mars,
oil on panel, 63.5 x 49 cm, framed

The reverse stamped with the hand of the city of Antwerp.

The present painting appears to be the model for a variant that was with Sotheby’s, New York, 19 May 1994, lot 205, as Frans Wouters, and later with Christie’s, New York, 14 April 2016, lot 326. This other version, closely following the present composition, was also oil on panel, 71.8 x 52.7 cm, and also marked with the hand of the city of Antwerp.

The composition appears to have originated in Rubens’s studio. However, a much larger variant, today in the Galleria Colonna, Rome, was attributed by Safarik to the ‘Scuola di van Dyck’ in his catalogue of the Colonna collection (see E. Safarik, Catalogo sommario della Galleria Colonna a Roma, Rome 1981, no. 67). Horst Vey, in the most recent catalogue of Van Dyck’s works, argued that the Colonna painting could indeed be by Van Dyck, produced in the artist’s second Antwerp period (see H. Vey, in: Van Dyck, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven/London 2004, p. 404/5, no. III.A12). Far from being secure, this attribution was challenged recently when the Colonna painting was given to Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert (see A. Heinrich, Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert, Ein flämischer Nachfolger van Dycks, Turnhout 2003, I, p. 311, no. B1). A brush drawing of the composition (without the horse and the Cupid on the right) in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, and an engraving by Coenrad Waumans and Jacobus Coelmans illustrate the popularity of the composition. A fourth version, given to the studio of Van Dyck, was sold at Christie’s, New York, on 9 June 2010, as lot 254.

The composition paraphrases a painting by Peter Paul Rubens of the same subject, but in reverse, which was formerly in Schloss Rheinsberg (now in Russia). It is unclear if there ever existed a prototype either by Rubens or van Dyck, but given the apparent popularity of the composition with artists associated with the Rubens studio, it is most plausible to follow the 2016 cataloguing of the most closely related variant, and give the present painting to the workshop of Rubens.