Christ with Martha and Mary

Inscriptions

signature, in monogram, lower left, on the handle of the bucket:vm

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 23 januari 2006

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1884: relined and restored
G. Tauber, 1991: treated

Provenance

…; collection Carolina Mathilda Henriette Huydecoper (?-1880), née van den Heuvel and the widow of Willem Huydecoper (1818-79), Utrecht, as P. van Moll;¹No. 228 of the inventory according to labels on the reverse.…; from Victor de Stuers, fl. 760, to the museum, 1883, as P. van Moll²NHA, ARS, Kop, inv. 39, p. 334, no. 40 (15 November 1883); NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 164, no. 220 (27 November 1883).

ObjectNumber: SK-A-781

The artist

Biography

Vincent Malò I (Cambrai c. 1602 - Rome 1644)

The figure painter Vincent Malò I perhaps had a greater reputation in Genoa than in Antwerp, where he had been trained and spent as much or more of his career. According to his Genoese near contemporary Raffaello Soprani (1612-1672),³Vite de’Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti Genovesi di Raffaell Soprani … in questa seconda edizione, accressciute ed arrichite di note da Carlo Giuseppe Ratti, 2 vols., Genoa 1768-69, I, p. 332. whose biography of him is longer than that by Cornelis de Bie,⁴ C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermartste schilders, architecte, beldtowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuwe, Antwerp s.a. (1662), p. 143. Malò was a native of Cambrai (then still part of the Spanish Netherlands), and was a pupil in Antwerp first of David Teniers I (1582-1649) and then of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). He became a master in the Antwerp guild of St Luke in 1623/24.⁵P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), I, p. 598. This would give his date of birth as c. 1602; the RKD suggests 1602/06, see also under note 17. Evidence of his early activity is a written promise to repay a loan by providing paintings, dated 8 January 1624.⁶E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, III, pp. 61-62. Further mention is made of him in the records of the guild of St Luke for the accounting years 1629-34.⁷P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), II, pp. 7, 29, 45, 58. Two signed works show the influence of Frans Francken II (1581-1642) and are presumably early;⁸Moses Leading the Israelites to the Promised Land, signed with monogram, with Douwes (adv. in Apollo, March 2002, p. 46); Apollo and Dancing Nymphs, signed, Jagdschloss, Grünewald, Berlin, see H. Börsch-Supan, Die Gemälde im Jagdschloss Grünewald, Berlin 1964, p. 93, no. 120; for further addition to the early oeuvre, see Schepers in E. McGrath, G. Martin, F. Healy, B. Schepers, C. Van de Velde and K. De Clippel, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XI (1): Mythological Subjects: Achilles to the Graces, 2 vols., London/Turnhout 2016, vol. ?, p. 250 under no. 9, and B. Schepers, ‘Vincent Malò’s Assumption of the Virgin in the Galleria Colonna unveiled’, The Rubenianum Quarterly (2019), no. 1, pp. 3-6, pp. 5-6. later descriptions of two paintings suggest an association with Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) who was in Antwerp for some years from 1627; he also copied a Betrayal of Christ by Van Dyck, which Van Dyck was likely to have executed before his departure for Italy in 1621 (the prototype may have been the version owned by Rubens and may thus have been copied when Malò was Rubens’s pupil).⁹Two paintings by Malò are recorded as having been retouched by Van Dyck: a Samson and Delilah in the Forchondt archive for 1668 (J. Denucé, Kunstausfuhr Antwerpens im 17. Jahrhundert: Die Firma Forchoudt, Antwerp 1931, pp. 99 and 101), and a Portrait in the Anna Threresia (sic) van Halen sale, Antwerp, 19 August 1749, no. 78 (G. Hoet, Catalogus of Naamlyst van Schilderyen, met derzelver Pryzen Zedert een langen reeks van Jaaren zoo in Holland als op andere Plaatzen in het openbaar verkogt. Benevens een Verzamelingvan Lysten van Verscheyden nog in wezen zynde Cabinetten, 3 vols., The Hague 1752-70, II, p. 260). A Betrayal of Christ after Van Dyck was listed in the Suzannah Willemsen’s inventory of 2 July 1657 (E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, VII, p. 397); for the Van Dyck owned by Rubens, see S.J. Barnes, N. de Poorter, O. Millar and H. Vey, Anthony van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven (Conn.)/London 2004, no. I.21. Schepers dates his move to Genoa ‘in or about 1634’.¹⁰Schepers in E. McGrath, G. Martin, F. Healy, B. Schepers, C. Van de Velde and K. De Clippel, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XI (1): Mythological Subjects: Achilles to the Graces, 2 vols., London/Turnhout 2016, I, p. 198 under no. 9.

Stoesser also dates Malò’s sojourn in Genoa from 1634;¹¹A. Stoesser, Van Dyck’s Hosts in Genoa, Lucas and Cornelis de Wael’s Lives, Business Activities and Works, 2 vols., Turnhout 2018, I, pp. 4-8. certainly his presence there by 1637 is documented by this signature, inscription and date on the Madonna and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist for the Benedictine monastery at Weingarten, Germany, and still in situ. He is recorded as having lodged with the Flemish artist Cornelis de Wael (1592-1667).¹²A. Stoesser, Van Dyck’s Hosts in Genoa, Lucas and Cornelis de Wael’s Lives, Business Activities and Works, 2 vols., Turnhout 2018, I, pp. 4-8; C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermartste schilders, architecte, beldtowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuwe, Antwerp s.a. (1662), p. 143. A Peasants’ kermesse by Malò and De Wael was owned by the Antwerp jeweller and collector Diego Duarte (1612-1691), and a painting attributed to them was in an Antwerp sale of 1749; extant are three paintings considered to be executed jointly by them.¹³E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, X, p. 163; J. Denucé, Kunstausfuhr Antwerpens im 17. Jahrhundert: Die Firma Forchoudt, Antwerp 1931, p. 134 and in the Anna Threresia (sic) van Halen sale, Antwerp, 19 August 1749, no. 134; see also A. Stoesser, Van Dyck’s Hosts in Genoa, Lucas and Cornelis de Wael’s Lives, Business Activities and Works, 2 vols., Turnhout 2018, II, p. 560, nos. 178-80. Rutteri has established a reasonably reliable oeuvre of between some 19 to 31 works executed in Italy.¹⁴M.G. Rutteri, ‘Vincenzo Malò dal manierismo al barocco’, Bollettino Liguistico 18 (1966), pp. 121-48, esp. pp. 143-148 and M.G. Rutteri, ‘Nuovi apporti per Vincenzo Malò’, Bollettino Liguistico 21 (1969), pp. 97-111, esp. p. 111, note 26. Schepers has recently added more.¹⁵B. Schepers, ‘Vincent Malò’s Assumption of the Virgin in the Galleria Colonna Unveiled’, The Rubenianum Quarterly 2014, no. 1, pp. 3-6. His activity in Genoa must have been for less than a decade¹⁶A decade was the duration given in S.J. Barnes et al., Van Dyck a Genova: Grande pittura e collezionismo, exh. cat. Genoa (Palazzo Ducale) 1997, p. 223. as Soprani reported that he was later active in Florence and Rome, where he died on 14 April 1644.¹⁷D. Bodart, Les peintres des Pays-Bas méridionaux et de la principauté de Liège à Rome au XVIIème siècle, 2 vols., Brussels/Rome 1970, I, p. 302; Schepers in E. McGrath, G. Martin, F. Healy, B. Schepers, C. Van de Velde and K. De Clippel, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XI (1): Mythological Subjects: Achilles to the Graces, 2 vols., London/Turnhout 2016, I, p. 200 under note 10.

Spiessens has rejected the identification of the artist with Vincent Adriaenssens and other Netherlanders with the same Christian name but otherwise only known by nicknames when active in Rome, a thesis recently and revived by De Maere and Wabbes.¹⁸Spiessens in_Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker_, Munich/Leipzig 1983-, vol. ?, p. 414; J. de Maere and M. Wabbes, Illustrated Dictionary of 17th century Flemish Painters, 3 vols., Brussels 1994, p. 30; A.O. (in S.J. Barnes et al., Van Dyck a Genova: Grande pittura e collezionismo, exh. cat. Genoa (Palazzo Ducale) 1997, under no. 80) specifically casts doubt on the De Maere and Wabbes proposal.

Malò painted figure subjects on both a small and large scale. Works in collaboration with Andries van Ertvelt (1590-1652) and Gysbert Leytens (as well as with De Wael) are recorded.¹⁹J. Denucé, Kunstausfuhr Antwerpens im 17. Jahrhundert: Die Firma Forchoudt, Antwerp 1931, pp. 86 and 142. He had three pupils in Antwerp, before he left for Genoa,²⁰P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), II, pp. 7, 29. and more famously was the teacher there of Antonio Maria Vassallo (c.1620-c. 1664-72).

REFERENCES
Vite de’Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti Genovesi di Raffaell Soprani … in questa seconda edizione, accressciute ed arrichite di note da Carlo Giuseppe Ratti, 2 vols., Genoa 1768-69, I, pp. 468-69; M.G. Rutteri, ‘Vincenzo Malò dal manierismo al barocco’, Bollettino Liguistico 18 (1966), pp. 121-48; M.G. Rutteri, ‘Nuovi apporti per Vincenzo Malò’, Bollettino Liguistico 21 (1969), pp. 97-111, pp. 97-111; S.J. Barnes et al., Van Dyck a Genova: Grande pittura e collezionismo, exh. cat. Genoa (Palazzo Ducale) 1997, under no. 80; Schepers in E. McGrath, G. Martin, F. Healy, B. Schepers, C. Van de Velde and K. De Clippel, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XI (1): Mythological Subjects: Achilles to the Graces, 2 vols., London/Turnhout 2016, I, p. 198 under no. 9

Entry

Christ in the present picture sits on the terrace, rather than in the house, of Martha and explains to her that her sister Mary, rather than helping her serve, had ‘chosen that good part’ namely to hear his word, as narrated in Luke 10:38-42.

The monogram, on the handle of the bucket (inconspicuously inscribed, like that in SK-A-590) is documented as that of Vincent Malò I in an inventory of a deceased estate made in Antwerp in 1644.²¹E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, V, p. 176. It is likely that the garden view is the work of a collaborator; the still life may be the work of a second collaborator, although Malò inscribed his monogram on part of it.

The monumental scale and calm atmosphere of the present painting are far removed from Malò’s early manner, recently defined by Schepers,²²B. Schepers, ‘Vincent Malò’s Assumption of the Virgin in the Galleria Colonna unveiled’, The Rubenianum Quarterly (2019), pp. 3-6, esp. p. 6. as favouring (on the whole) ‘narrative scenes of violence and despair’ in the idiom of the small-scale Antwerp figure painters such as Frans Francken II.²³Exceptional is the Apollo and the Muses, recorded as in the Jagdschloss, Grunewald, Berlin, see H. Börsch-Supan, Die Gemälde im Jagdschloss Grünewald, Berlin 1964, p. 93, no. 120; similar morphology is found in an unsigned picture, attributed to Malò by M. Díaz Padrón, ‘Un lienzo de Santa Catalina de Siena de Vicente Malò’, Archivo Espanol de Arte 72 (1999), pp. 558-60, esp. pp. 558-59, fig. 9. Indeed he believes²⁴E-mail to the author, 2019. that the present painting was probably painted in Genoa rather than Antwerp and compares the female facial types with those in the St Catherine published by Diaz Padrón in 1999,²⁵Madrid, private collection, see M. Díaz Padrón, ‘Un lienzo de Santa Catalina de Siena de Vicente Malò’, Archivo Espanol de Arte 72 (1999), pp. 558-60, esp. p. 558, fig. 8. and with those in works by the artist he recently published himself.²⁶B. Schepers, ‘Vincent Malò’s Assumption of the Virgin in the Galleria Colonna unveiled’, The Rubenianum Quarterly (2019), pp. 3-6.

However, there are persuasive reasons for believing that the Christ with Martha and Mary is a work executed in Antwerp in the early 1630s before Malò’s departure for Italy. First the landscape background is executed in the typically Flemish manner of followers of Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625), while the still life is close in style to that of Jacob Fopsen Van Es (1596-1666). Next, the scale is that of Rubens working on the Ildefonso altarpiece (1630-32).²⁷R. Oldenbourg, P.P. Rubens: Des Meisters Gemälde, Stuttgart/Berlin 1921, p. 325. The loggia-like setting, configuration of the figures and placement of the still life were probably inspired by Rubens’s small-scale treatment of the theme, with Jan Brueghel II (1601-1678), of 1628²⁸As pointed out by Oldfield in D. Oldfield, Later Flemish Paintings in the National Gallery of Ireland: The Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, Dublin (National Gallery of Ireland) 1992, p. 16, and for a discussion of the painting pp. 13-18, no. 513; see recently C. van Mulders, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XXVII(1): Works in Collaboration, Jan Brueghel I and II, Oostkamp 2016, p. 94, no. 19. in a rendering that may have first have been devised by Rubens and Jan’s father,²⁹C. van Mulders, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XXVII(1): Works in Collaboration, Jan Brueghel I and II, Oostkamp 2016, p. 94 under no. 19. as is suggested by a similar grouping already evident in a work perhaps by Adam van Noort (1562-1641), a copy of which is depicted in Willem van Haecht II’s (1593-1637) Art Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest (Rubenshuis, Antwerp) of 1628.³⁰A. van Suchtelen and B. van Beneden, Room for Art in Seventeenth-Century Antwerp, exh. cat. Antwerp (Rubenshuis)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 2009-10, p. 128, no. 26; the whereabouts of the prototype has still to be confirmed. Furthermore, there is a connection with the substantial figure types favoured by Cornelis de Vos (c. 1584/85-1651) at about this time.³¹Compare the paintings dated by the RKD circa 1630: The Allegory of Time in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, and The Finding of Moses, offered in Amsterdam (Christie’s), 6 May 2008, no. 82.

Gregory Martin, 2022

Literature

M.G. Rutteri, ‘Vincenzo Malò dal manierismo al barocco’, Bollettino Liguistico 18 (1966), pp. 121-48, esp. p. 145, no. 17

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 107, no. 895; 1976, p. 360, no. A 781

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'Vincent (I) Malò, Christ with Martha and Mary, c. 1630 - c. 1634', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7015

(accessed 14 June 2025 15:27:28).