Lot 1453 Dα

According to Jan de Maere and Walter Liedke, the present piece is an early work by Cornelis Schut copying a lost work by Peter Paul Rubens which was recorded in Jan Witdoeck's engraving "Maria Mater Dei, Regina Coeli". The Rubens painting was rediscovered in a Rhenish private collection just last year (cf.: C. Eder: Maria, Gottesmutter und Himmelskönigin. Ein wiederentdecktes Gemälde aus dem Spätwerk des Peter Paul Rubens. In: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch vol. LXXV, 2014, p. 229 ff). In contrast to C. Eder, Liedke and de Maere date the present work, and thus also its prototype, to the period around 1617 - 1618 whilst the artist was working in Rubens' workshop. Although the motif is an invention of the master, the cooler colour palette and pronounced use of light are typical characteristics which Schut was to develop throughout his oeuvre. A sketch of this composition attributed to Rubens is kept in the Albertina in Vienna (C. Eder, op. cit., p. 249).