Lot 2055 Dα

The documented facts about the biography of the painter Michael Sweerts are rather sparse: Born in Brussels in 1618, in 1646 his name appears in the parish registers of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. There we learn that he lived in the "Strada Margutta", where other Catholic artists from the north also lived. Sweerts had achieved quite considerable fame in Rome and could count on a circle of prominent patrons, first and foremost Prince Camillo Pamphili and the Dutch silk merchants Jean, Josef and Jeronimus Deutz. Despite this, he left the city again in the period between 1652 and 1654. In 1655 he is mentioned as having attended a baptism in Brussels, and in 1659 he is included among the artists in the city's Academy of Saint Luke. We also learn that he founded his own painting school in Brussels. Later, he joined a Catholic missionary organization, consisting of followers of Vincent de Paul, which was dedicated to conducting missionary work in the East. In 1661, Sweerts is documented in Amsterdam for a few months, where he supervised the construction of a ship in which the missionaries would set sail on their journey to the Far East. In December of the same year, we find him in Marseilles, from whence the ship left shortly after for Palestine. However, during the journey overland in Syria, Sweerts began to experience psychological issues, so that somewhere between Isfahan and Tabriz in Persia he was dismissed from the society and continued his journey alone. He eventually managed to arrive at the Jesuit sanctuary in Goa, where he is said to have died at the age of 46.
As an artist, Michael Sweerts is associated with the so-called Bamboccianti, a group of Dutch painters in Rome who developed the genre of southern peasant scenes. However, he can hardly be referred to as a "Bambocciante tout-court", as his works display an intellectual and socio-philosophical sensitivity that elevates them from the status of mere genre paintings.
Following his arrival in Rome, Michael Sweerts pursued the subject of "artists at work" with remarkable persistence. Between 1646 and 1652, he created four paintings of artists' studios and four others showing artists drawing outdoors. In Rome, Sweerts recognized that being an artist, or the artist's mission, involved intellectual reflection on one's own actions beyond the craft itself.
In this sense, the present painting has been described by Laura Laureati as an emblematic example of Sweerts's early activity in Rome (op. cit.). Equally significantly, Lara Yaeger-Crasselt recognizes it in her study of Michael Sweert's role in artistic education in the Netherlands and Rome at this time (op. cit.).
This artist's complete works consist of barely more than 50 paintings. The rank of this work within his overall oeuvre is evidenced by the many publications and the numerous exhibitions in which it has been described or shown.