Imaginary Palace In Venice - Workshop Of Hans Vredeman De Vries (1526/27 – 1607)

Oil on parquet panel – Flemish school of the late 16th century – Workshop of Hans Vredeman de Vries.
On the immense terrace of a palace bathed by the waters of the Venetian lagoon, there is great bustle: gallant conversations here, horse training there, figures in action scattered around… and the view comes to life! Our painting – clearly painted in the studio of the man considered in the Netherlands to be the father of architectural views and church interiors as an independent genre – offers the viewer a poetic vision of court life at the end of the 16th century. Although Hans de Vries never travelled to Italy, the study of Sebastiano Serlio’s (1475 – 1554) Treatise on Architecture led him to fully embrace this renaissance formal culture. Thus, with great freedom, he painted an imaginary palace facing the Serenissima, which he had never seen. The motifs that characterize Venice, probably copied from engravings, are multiplied: in addition to the campanile and the three domes topped with crosses of the Basilica of Saint Mark on the horizon, gondolas animate the surface of the water. Our composition is a true bridge between Flemish Gothic tradition and Italianizing ancient heritage, playing with the richly decorated facades, the colonnades and a large flowerbed on the right. A peaceful atmosphere coupled with voluptuousness envelops the scene: on the right, a woman behind a balustrade addresses a servant who is carrying a tray of refreshments, another seated on the steps of a staircase caresses her dog; in the center, two elegant women receive the homage of a knight; and on the left, a last one chats with a gentleman in a feathered hat. This delightful spectacle wraps around a single vanishing point according to the canon of the central Italian perspective that so enthused Hans Vredeman de Vries.

Our painting is enhanced by its powerful frame with an inverted profile in blackened wood.
Dimensions: 59.6 x 93.5 cm – 84 x 117 cm
Sold with invoice and certificate of expertise

Hans Vredeman de Vries (Leeuwarden, 1526/1527 — Antwerp or Hamburg, 1607), is the son of Dirks de Vries, an artilleryman in the service of Baron Georg Schenck van Toutenburg, stadtholder (provincial governor) of Friesland. As a young man, he trained as a carpenter, then as a stained glass painter and finally as a painter. In 1549, going to Antwerp to complete his training, he studied Serlio's Treatise on Architecture translated from Italian by Pieter Coecke van Aelst, whom he assisted in creating the decorations for the Joyous Entry of Philip II into Mechelen and Antwerp. Settled in Mechelen in 1552, where he was registered with the Guild of Saint Luke, he created several decorations. From 1553, he wrote and published a series of works teaching the processes for composing perspective representations. And from 1561, according to the orders and the political crises that shook the country, Hans de Vries constantly moved from city to city, accompanied by his two main assistants Hendrik van Steenwijk I and his son Paul Vredeman de Vries. Thus he stayed in Antwerp, Mechelen, Aachen, Liège, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Danzig and Prague. At once a painter, architect and architectural theoretician, Paul Vredeman de Vries knew how to spread his ideas and his publications. His exceptional longevity allowed him to exert a considerable influence on the painters of the Northern schools.

Bibliography:
- JANTZEN, Hans, Das niederländische Architekturbild, Braunschweig: Klinkhardt und Biermann, 1979
- Collective work for the exhibition at the KMSK in Antwerp, Hans Vredeman de Vries und die Renaissance im Norden, Hirmer, 2002
- HOWARTH, Jeremy, The Steenwyck Family as Masters of Perspective, Brepols, 2009
- MAILLET, Bernard G., Architectural Painting of the Northern Schools: Church Interiors 1580-1720, Pandora Publishers Wijnegem, 2012