Flemish Painter Of The First Half Of The 17th Century, *nascendo Morimur*

Flemish painter from the first half of the 17th century

Nascendo Morimur

Oil on canvas, 55 x 45 cm

With frame, 64 x 53 cm

The allegorical painting commonly identified by the title *Nascendo morimur* is the work of a Flemish painter active in the first half of the 17th century, deeply indebted to the figurative tradition developed in Antwerp in the previous century and, in particular, to the models created by Frans Floris. The work is part of an iconographic and conceptual lineage that, through the circulation of prototypes and the mediation of his workshop, extends all the way to the Northern Baroque sensibility. The painting depicts a young, naked boy seated on a stone pedestal. The body, solid and three-dimensional, is rendered with great attention to anatomical modeling, while the pose introduces a complex symbolic system: his right foot rests on a skull, a clear allusion to death, while his right arm leans on an empty hourglass, an emblem of time passed and the transience of existence. These elements clearly refer to the Vanitas repertoire, a central theme in moral reflection between the 16th and 17th centuries. The gesture of the right arm, extended toward the background, invites the viewer to observe the scene behind it, where a glimpse of the Resurrection of Christ can be seen—the only possible response to the human finitude evoked in the foreground. From an iconographic perspective, the work reinterprets a specific model: Frans Floris’s *Allegory*, now in a private collection, which was later reworked—either by Floris himself or by an artist from his circle—into a painting previously titled *Nascendo morimur*, now housed in the collections of the National Museum in Stockholm. The meaning of the motto, “we are born to die,” is expanded here in a Christological key, contrasting physical death with the promise of resurrection. This dialectic between *mors* and *salus* constitutes the conceptual core of the image. Frans Floris, born Frans de Vriendt in Antwerp in 1516, the son of the stonemason Cornelis I de Vriendt, initially trained as a sculptor before turning to painting. After an apprenticeship with Lambert Lombard in Liège, he undertook a pivotal journey to Italy, staying in Florence and Rome, where he deeply absorbed the lessons of Italian art. He was particularly influenced by Michelangelo and the Mannerists, especially Giorgio Vasari and Parmigianino. Upon his return to Antwerp, Floris founded a workshop of extraordinary scope, with over one hundred students, becoming the leading mediator of Italian artistic models in the Netherlands. In the specific case of *Nascendo morimur*, the connection to Parmigianino is particularly evident: the face and torso of the boy recall the child in the *Madonna of the Rose*, now in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden, as well as the Infant Jesus in the *Holy Family with Angels* at the Prado Museum.  The work thus stands as a significant example of the persistence and transformation of Frans Floris’s legacy in 17th-century Flanders, demonstrating how his prototypes continued to be relevant and influential well beyond his death in Antwerp in 1570.