…; ? collection P. Frenkel [Ph. Frenkel, Utrecht];¹¹Note RMA. Frenkel is probably to be identified with Ph. Frenkel of Utrecht, who sold porcelain, faience, objets d’art, tapestries and furniture in a series of sales in Paris in 1882-89 (Lugt nos. 42267, 43395, 46095, 47732, 48495). from whom acquired by Daniel Francken Dzn (1838-98), Amsterdam and Le Vésinet, Paris; by whom bequeathed to the museum, 1898; on loan to the Kunsthistorisch Instituut, Utrecht, April 1923; returned at an unknown date

Object number: SK-A-1752

Credit line: D. Franken Bequest, Le Vésinet

In the centre the naked goddess Fortuna stands on a sphere placed on a column decorated with an antique relief of a sacrifice. A white man pushes away a black man from his favoured position at her feet. The goddess scatters valuables to her own right – coins, a purse, a winged slide trombone, a lance, a tazza and a goblet. Below the lucky ones rejoice, while some gather up her gifts. At the base of the column are a cittern, lute and music scores. To her left are the unlucky ones bemoaning their fate beneath a burning castle on a hilly outcrop.

Although acquired as by the Dutch artist Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (1589-1662) – an artist in whom the owner Daniel Francken (1838-1898) took a particular interest – and attributed by him to either of Adriaen’s sons, Hubert or Pieter,¹³¹³Francken made a study of Adriaen van de Venne, the manuscript of which is conserved in the museum (objecte file RMA), as Rosemarie Staats, an intern at the museum who wrote a draft entry on the present picture, pointed out. the present painting was assigned in the 1903 catalogue to an anonymous Dutch master. Only in 1992 was it correctly described as being Flemish, being then attributed to Cornelis de Baeilleur (sic) (active 1625-d. 1671). But the facial types seem not to be those of this Antwerp master.¹⁴¹⁴F.-C. Legrand, Les peintres flamands de genre au XVIIe siècle, Paris/Brussels 1963, pp. 64-65, fig. 26. The artist would rather appear to be the same as that responsible for the paintings decorating the small cabinet acquired by the North Carolina Museum of Art in 1999.¹⁵¹⁵D.P. Weller, Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings, Systematic Catalogue of the Collection, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (N.C.) 2009, pp. 255-60. The cabinet was offered in the Knigg von Nida Collection sale, London (Sotheby’s), 9 July 1998, no. 1 (illustrated in colour in the catalogue) and acquired by the museum from Otto Naumann Ltd., New York. And indeed another painting by the same hand was on the New York market in 2014.¹⁶¹⁶The Contest between Apollo and Pan, copper, 35.6 x 52 cm; information from Otto Naumann, a scan of a colour photograph was kindly sent by Bria Koser of Otto Naumann Ltd. The landscapes in these works appear to be by different collaborators.

It was Sutton who attributed the paintings decorating the cabinet to Simon Flocquet,¹⁷¹⁷Old Master Paintings, New York (Otto Naumann Ltd.) 1999, pp. 28-31, no. 8. by whom only one signed painting is so far known.¹⁸¹⁸Minerva and the Muses on Mount Helicon, offered in an anonymous sale, London (Sotheby’s), 26 October 1988, no. 5; illustrated by J. de Maere and M. Wabbes, Illustrated Dictionary of 17th Century Flemish Painters, 3 vols., Brussels 1994, II, p. 415. In the Rijksmuseum painting, however, the landscape is differently handled, and the faces and bodies are more delicately rendered.¹⁹¹⁹See also D. Weller in D.P. Weller, Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings, Systematic Catalogue of the Collection, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (N.C.) 2009, under note 5, p. 260. The style is reminiscent perhaps of Adriaen van Stalbemt (1580-1662)²⁰²⁰Compare the figures in the earlier Triumph of David of 1619 in the Museo Nacional del Prado, M. Díaz Padrón et al., El siglo de Rubens en el Museo del Prado. Cátalogo razonado de pintura flamenco del siglo XVII, 3 vols., coll. cat. Barcelona 1995, II, pp. 1306-07, no. 1782. whereas in the paintings decorating the cabinet it is akin more to that associated with Willem van Herp (c. 1614-1677),²¹²¹The round-eyed physiognomies bring Van Herp to mind; cf. the treatment of figures in The Flood (private collection) published by M. Díaz Padrón, ‘Obras de Guillaume van Herp en España, I’, Archivo Español de Arte 50 (1977), pp. 381-82. esp. pp. 364, 369, fig. 1; for the composition as a whole there is a slight connection with The Transfiguration (Granada Cathedral), see ibid., pp. 376, 373, fig. 15. who joined the guild three/four years after Flocquet. But Sutton’s proposal may well be correct. It seems best, as Sutton himself recognized, to qualify the attribution, especially as it is made on the basis of a comparison with only one painting. Hence the Rijksmuseum painting is given the same appellation, ‘attributed to Simon Flocquet’, while it is recognized that the landscape is the work of another hand.

Some details in the costumes suggest a date of execution of the present painting of about 1645. The flat, linen collars worn by the man comforting the woman, bottom right, and by the man grasping the legs of the goddess as well as their circular, buff-coloured hats appear in paintings by David Teniers II (1610-1690) of 1643 and 1644.²²²²Cf. the collars worn to the left in the Group Portrait of the Oude Voetboog Guild in the Grote Markt, Antwerp, of 1643, in the Hermitage (N. Gritsay and N. Babina, State Hermitage Museum Catalogue: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Flemish Painting, St Petersburg 2008, no. 436) and in the Louvre Prodigal Son, of 1644 (J. Foucart, Catalogue des peintures flamands et hollandaises du musée du Louvre, Paris 2009, p. 269, no. 1878). For the hat, see that worn by the ‘nobleman’ in the Landscape with a Family at an Inn, of 1644 (M. Klinge and D. Lüdke (eds.), David Teniers der Jüngere 1610-1690: Alltag und Vergnügen in Flandern, exh. cat. Karlsruhe (Staatlichen Kunsthalle Karlsruhe) 2005-06, no. 35). The support of west German or Netherlandish oak would have been ready for use from 1628 or more plausibly from ten years later.

The composition bears some resemblance to the small, upright copper in the centre of the North Carolina cabinet showing the Triumph of Cupid, in which the god stands atop a column with prostrate humans beneath. Thematically related are the print by Jan Harmensz Muller (1571-1628) of 1590 after Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem (1562-1638),²³²³P.J.J. van Thiel, Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem 1562-1638: A Monograph and Catalogue Raisonné, Doornspijk 1999, no. P.12 and pl. 52. Comparable, but not so apposite, is the episode in the foreground of Tabula Cebetis engraved in 1592 by J. Matham after Hendrik Goltzius (see L. Widerkehr and H. Leeflang, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, 1450-1700: Jacob Matham, 3 vols., Ouderkerk aan de IJssel 2007-08, II, no. 194, pp. 107-11). and the painting by Frans Francken II (1581-1642) at Compiègne of circa 1615.²⁴²⁴U. Härting, Frans Francken der Jüngere (1581-1642): Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Freren 1989, no. 374, fig. on p. 349. In fact the print must have been known to the artist as the gifts, scattered by Fortuna and the child on the mother’s shoulders, left, are directly derived from it.²⁵²⁵As observed by Rosemarie Staats, an intern at the museum who wrote a draft entry on the present picture. The Francken also includes the motif of burning buildings on the unlucky right-hand side of the composition. The goddess is depicted, following convention, standing on a sphere, her veil billowing in the wind.²⁶²⁶See G. de Tervarent, Attributs et symboles dans l’art profane 1450-1600; dictionnaire d’un langage perdu, Genoa 1958, cols. 360-61 and 410-11; see also Alpers’s discussion (in S. Alpers, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, IX: The Decoration of the Torre de la Parada, Brussels/London/New York 1971, p. 209, under no. 23) of Rubens’s depiction of Fortuna for the Torre de la Parada. For a more comprehensive account of the goddess and her attributes, see E. Panofsky, ‘Good Government or Fortune?’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 68 (1966), pp. 305-36, esp. pp. 307ff.

The configuration of a white man roughly disposing of a black man for a privileged place close to the goddess is, however, exceptional. This motif may display a particular social context. The contest would appear to be echoed by the hound warning off the swan in the foreground. Sources for these central components of the composition have not been identified.

Gregory Martin, 2022

E.K. Grootes et al., ’t Kan verkeren: Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero, 1585-1618, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum) 1968, no. 26

1903, p. 11, no. 100 (as anonymous Dutch school, first half of the seventeenth century); 1918, p. 11, no. 100; 1976, p. 660, no. A 1752 (as north Netherlandish school, c. 1630); 1992, p. 40, no. A 1752 (as attributed to Cornelis de Baeilleur [sic])

G. Martin, 2022, 'attributed to Simon Flocquet, The Goddess Fortuna Bestowing her Gifts, c. 1645', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20025877