(Breslau 1591 – after 1650)
Belshazzar’s Feast,
oil on panel, 140 x 198 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Rafael Valls, London 2001;
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 22 January 2004, lot 228 (as Flemish School, circa 1600);
Private collection, Iran;
sale, Sotheby’s, London 7 December 2017, lot 145 (as Flemish School, circa 1600);
where acquired by the present owner

The present panel is a decorous addition to the oeuvre of the Silesian painter Bartholomäus Strobl the Younger. Active in Prague, Strobl represents perhaps the final flourishing of the Mannerist style associated with the then already defunct court of Rudolf II, and particularly the works of the Fleming Bartholomeus Spranger, whose paintings Strobl owned. The present Belshazzar’s Feast may be compared with another treatment by Strobl of the same subject in the Schorr Collection, London, exhibited at the Phoenix Museum of Art in 2017.

The subject is taken from the book of Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar II ransacked Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon in circa 586 BC, carrying the Israelites off into bondage. His descendant the last King of the Neo Babylonians, Belshazzar (r. 556-539 BC), intended to serve wine and meat to his guests from the sacred treasures of the Hebrews, when a celestial hand appeared, writing in Aramaic but shown in the present picture at the upper right in Latin script: ‘Mene, Mene, Tekel upharsin’. Daniel alone could read this, and it heralded the downfall of the Babylonian Empire. The original iconography may derive from an engraving by Jan Harmenz. Muller of circa 1598. Muller’s Amsterdam press, The Gilded Compasses, made prints after designs by several artists of the Prague School.