The Baptism of Queen candace´s Eunuch
1639 - 1641.Not on display
This painting entered the museum as a work by Claude Lorrain, but in 1843, it appeared in the catalog as an original by Jan Both, an attribution that has been maintained in posterior catalogs and is accepted without argument by specialists.
Drawn from Acts (VIII: 26-38), the subject is the conversion and baptism of Queen Candace of Ethiopia by the Apostle Philip the Eunuch, who did so while returning from his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The composition is complex. The group of figures seems to be drawn from an engraving by Johannes Gillisz. van Vliet (1600/1610-1668) after an original by Rembrandt, now lost. The space is articulated in horizontal planes cut by two diagonals of light from the background to the left. One runs between the mass of rock that closes the composition on that side and the small hill against which the eunuch’s procession is silhouetted. The other, which is barely a sunbeam, enters behind the trees at the right and tenuously lights the scene of the baptism. The overall composition and the treatment of light reappear in a more evolved state in later landscapes by Both, including his Southern Landscape with Walkers, from the former Gagarine collection (Saint Petersburg).
The detailed pictorial treatment of the leaves and the diverse elements rendered with loose brushstrokes and very little paint are characteristic of Jan Both. The figures are very expressive and very well constructed. The x-ray image shows that they were added after the landscape was complete and their authorship has been the subject of considerable debate. Waddingham (1964) and Burke (1976) consider them the work of Andries Both, while Barghahn (1986) maintains the attribution to Jan Miel that appears in the Museo del Prado’s catalogs since 1843. The x-ray image, however, shows no difference between their pictorial technique and that of all the other elements in this work.
The formidable campaign of arts acquisitions carried out by the Count-Duke of Olivares in the 1640s to decorate the vast spaces at Madrid’s Buen Retiro Palace included a very notable number of landscapes. Of these works -almost two hundred in all- we cannot determine how many were purchased in Flanders or Spain, nor which ones came from private collections or other Royal Seats, but thanks to the works at the Museo del Prado and documents found to date, we can establish with certainty that the Buen Retiro Palace was furnished with numerous landscapes painted for the occasion by artists active in Rome.
A series of at least twenty-five landscapes with anchorites and a dozen Italianate landscapes -large format works by different artists- were commissioned. Of the pieces that have survived, most are at the Museo del Prado. Commissioned in Rome between 1633 and 1641, these landscape paintings from the Buen Retiro constituted an early anthology of this new painting from nature characterized by a new awareness of the effects of light and the atmosphere of the Roman countryside that would eventually spread through most of Europe, representing one of many aspects of classicism (Text drawn from Posada Kubissa, T.: Pintura holandesa en el Museo Nacional del Prado. Catálogo razonado, 2009, pp. 230-232; Capitelli, G. in Úbeda de los Cobos, A.: El Palacio del Rey Planeta. Felipe IV y el Buen Retiro, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2005, p. 241).
