Lot 1235 Dα

At number 1241 in the chapter on Jan Lievens, Sumoski lists ten examples of this depiction of Zacharias, described as 'Interior with a priest writing'. Our picture, in line with the provenance, is identical with example 'a' from this list.
From these pictures, Kurt Bauch believes one version at Upton House, from the Walter collection, to be a genuine Lievens, and the others to be a copies. In contrast, Sumowski believes that all ten pictures are copies from a lost original Lievens. Lloyd de Witt (knowing a photography), like Kurt Bauch in 1960, holds only the work in England to be from the hand of Jan Lievens. Bernhard Schnackenburg however disagrees with the theory that Lieven only ever made the one original and that he didn't make any copies.
It wasn't unusual for Lievens to reproduce his paintings, not least due to the high demand of the Leidener collection for his works, where he was able to provide them with these single figure, small format compositions at an affordable price. Schnackenburg has studied our picture first hand and determined that the style of painting is very similar to the example at Upton House. Both pictures are comparable to the other small figure, historical pictures signed and dated to 1631 from Lievens and must therefore be placed within this field. For this reason, Schnackenburg will also be featuring our picture as an original work by Jan Lieven in his monograph 'Jan Lievens - Friend and Rival of the Young Rembrandt'.