Early seventeenth-century Antwerp - the artistic capital of the region known at the time as Flanders (modern-day Belgium) - saw the emergence of a type of painting which celebrated the taste for art of the social elites and rulers. Known as “Collectors’ cabinets”, the most informative of all the surviving examples, due to its content, is this one on temporary display at the Museo del Prado.
Depicted hanging on the walls of a room are forty-two paintings, most of them by Flemish artists, including one of a naked woman at her dressing table by Van Eyck which is particularly important as the original is now lost, as well as works by Rubens and others. Also to be seen is the painting of Ceres in the House of Hecuba by Adam Elsheimer, probably the same painting now in the collection of the Prado. The room also features sculptures, porcelain, prints and other objects. Seated on the left are the region’s two rulers, the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia, daughter of Philip II of Spain, and her cousin and husband Albert of Austria. The infanta holds a small painting of flowers by Jan Brueghel.
In August 1615 the Archduke and Archduchess visited the collection depicted here, which belonged to the merchant Cornelis van der Geest. This is a fictional recreation of their visit, painted thirteen years later. The collector himself is shown facing Isabel and Albert, pointing with his right hand to a painting by Quinten Massys. Behind him we see Van Dyck while next to Albert of Austria and talking to him is Rubens. Other figures include Nicolaas Rockox (who commissioned the large-format Adoration of the Magi from Rubens on display in this gallery in the Museo del Prado) and Ladislao Vasa, future king of Poland (the only person of sufficient rank to be allowed to keep his hat on in the presence of the two governors). On a table in the centre of the scene is a drawing depicting Alexander the Great’s visit to the studio of Apelles while the artist was depicting Campaspe, a subject that allowed modern art patrons (the Archduke and Archduchess and the collector) to identify with that legendary past.
