Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot
Healing of the Sick at the Pool of Bethesda
Oil on canvas (relined). 97 x 137 cm.
Monogrammed and dated lower left: JC Drooche Sloot. 1644 (J and C conjoined).
The subject of this work is derived from the Gospel of John (5:1-17) and was regarded by contemporaries as an exhortation to charity. Droochsloot thus placed himself in the tradition of 16th-century Dutch painting, especially the depictions of beggars by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The subject and composition must have enjoyed some popularity, as there are several iterations by Droochsloot in his own hand, among others in the Antwerp Museum voor Schone Kunsten, the Utrecht Centraal Museum and the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig.
Provenance
Auctioned by Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus, Berlin, 31.3.1914, lot 98. - Alfred Kummerlé (1887-1949), Brandenburg. - Seized by the GDR authorities in 1953 and passed on to the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig 1954, inv. no. 1482. - Restituted to his heirs in 2012.
Literature
Susanne Heiland: Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig. Katalog der Gemälde, Leipzig 1979, p. 51. - Dietulf Sander: Museum der bildenden Künste. Katalog der Gemälde 1995, Stuttgart 1995, p. 49, illus. 151. - Jan Nicolaisen: Niederländische Malerei 1430-1800. Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Leipzig 2012, p. 92, illus.