(Brussels circa 1600–1639 Rome)
Venus sleeping, with satyrs and cupids,
oil on canvas, 146 x 179 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly Collection of Anna Moffo and Mario Lanfranchi, until the 1970’s;
Private collection, Italy;
where acquired by the present owner

The composition of the present lot relates to a painting in the Royal Collection Trust (inv. no. RCIN 405568), entitled Venus Sleeping, with Satyrs and Cupids which was purchased by Charles II of England in 1660 and attributed to ‘Carlo Filippo’. It was this inventory citation that allowed Anthony Blunt to link the Royal Collection work with Karel Philips Spierincks, who is referred to as ‘Carlo Filippo Fiammengo’ in a 17th-century inventory of the Giustiniani Collection in Rome (A. Blunt, Poussin Studies X: Karel Philips Spierincks, the first imitator of Poussin’s ‘Bacchanals’, in: The Burlington Magazine, no. 102, 1960, pp. 308–11). Blunt’s insight helped to gather a small group of high-quality works around the name of Spierincks, however the corpus of works remain limited, partly because the artist died at a young age.

The scene depicted in the present work is clearly inspired by Poussin’s pastoral paintings, which were highly sought after by collectors in the 1620s and 1630s and which Spierincks would certainly have been aware of during his stay in Italy. Spierincks arrived in Rome in 1622 and in 1625 he was sharing accomodation with a fellow countryman, the sculptor François Duquesnoy (R. Vodret, Alla ricerca di ‘Ghiongrat’: studi sui libri parrocchiali romani 1600–1630, Rome 2011, p. 75). Duquesnoy, along with Poussin, seems to have been a major source of inspiration for Spierincks’ paintings. In addition, Spierincks’ works contain references to classical statuary, which the painter had the chance to study closely in the Giustiniani Collection.

In Rome, Spierincks earned the admiration of prominent collectors including Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, who involved him in the Galleria Giustiniana project, a series of engravings based on the most famous paintings in his collection. Giustiniani also commissioned Spierincks to create Hagar and the Angel, now at the Neues Palais in Potsdam (see S. Danesi Squarzina, A ‘Hagar and the Angel’ by Carel Philips Spierinck in Potsdam, in: The Burlington Magazine, no. 141, 1999, pp. 349–51). Other religious-themed paintings are mentioned in sources but as yet unlocated, such as, for example, the canvases commissioned by the Confraternity of Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome, which were left unfinished by the artist upon his death, and another canvas depicting Saint Norbert.

There is substantial further evidence of the artist’s success among seventeenth century collectors: The posthumous inventory of Cardinal Alessandro Omodei (1685) mentions two paintings of saints executed by Spierincks while the collection of Giovanni Andrea Lumaga in Venice included a Saint John the Baptist and a Salvator Mundi. Also amongst his patrons was Pope Urban VIII.