(Antwerp circa 1555–1585/90)
The Baptism of Christ,
oil on panel, 75.5 x 107.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Weiss Gallery, London;
Private collection, England, until 2018

We are grateful to Luuk Pijl for confirming the attribution on the basis of a high-resolution photograph and for his help in cataloguing the present painting. A certificate dated 18 July 2019 is available.

This beautifully preserved painting should be dated around 1580. It is fully executed by the Antwerp master Jacob de Backer, who was at this time at the peak of his powers.

The present panel shows a monumental rendition of The Baptism of Christ. The episode is told in varying accounts in three of the synoptic gospels (Matthew 3: 13–17; Mark 1: 9–13 and Luke 3: 21–22). It is related that Jesus went down from Nazareth to the river Jordan, where he was baptised by John the Baptist. According to the gospels, during the ceremony John kneels on the riverbank and wears a traditional camel skin on his back, but here he is rendered in a beautiful red cloth. According to Matthew, John the Baptist initially refused to perform the rite, but Christ insisted and so was baptised. Christ stands upright in a loincloth, almost thigh-deep in the stream, his hand crossed on his chest in an attitude of humility and piety. In front of him lies the fallen drapery of his cast-off cloak. During the rite the heavens opened up and the Holy Spirit descended, embodied in the composition by a dove, as can be read in the gospels of Matthew and Mark. The story, one of the five major milestones in the gospel narrative of the life of Christ, has inspired a variety of artists of first rank. Best known today are the renditions of Piero della Francesca, El Greco, Rubens and Goya.

Biographical data on Jacob de Backer is very scant, which makes him one of the most mysterious painters of the sixteenth century. It is assumed that he was born around 1555 and died circa 1585. He was one of the most important Mannerist masters in sixteenth-century Antwerp and occupies a firm position between the generations of Frans Floris and Rubens. He was active during the 1570s and first part of the 1580s. Despite the fact that he presumably died early at about 30 years of age, he was very prolific.

Karel van Mander, the indispensable source regarding sixteenth-century painting, relates in his Schilder-boeck, published in Haarlem in 1604, fols. 231/232, that de Backer was abandoned as a young boy by his father, also a painter, who had to flee Antwerp because of an impending court trial. According to van Mander the young Jacob de Backer worked for a number of years in the studio of the painter and picture dealer of Italian origin known as Antonio van Palermo (1503/13 – before 1589). He later entered the workshop of Hendrick van Steenwijck the Elder (1550–1603). Van Mander claims that Palermo pushed him so hard that the young de Backer died in the arms of his master’s daughter at the age of thirty. As van Mander indicates this had happened a long time ago it probably had been before van Steenwijck left Antwerp in 1586. If this is correct it places the time of death of de Backer prior to 1586.

Little is known about the artist’s training. Strangely, there is no record of him ever becoming a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke. While his work shows a strong influence of the Mannerism of Rome and Florence, in particular the style of Giorgio Vasari, there is no proof that de Backer visited Italy, as did many of his Flemish contemporaries. His work is furthermore strongly influenced by the multi-figured compositions of Frans Floris. Many of his compositions deal with complex allegorical subjects. This has been interpreted as evidence that the artist had enjoyed a humanistic education and his patrons were from Antwerp’s educated class. Unfortunately, none of his pictures mentioned by Karel van Mander in the Schilder-boeck has been securely identified, and no painting or drawing attributed to the master is signed. 

Only three known pictures can be traced to the sixteenth century through provenance. These are two versions of a Last Judgment – one painted for the funerary monument of his fellow Antwerp painter Pieter Goetkind and the other for the funerary monument of the famous Antwerp printer and publisher Christophe Plantin, who died in 1589. The version currently in the Antwerp Cathedral originates from the Plantin monument. It is now believed that the side wings to this picture is the work of another artist. The version made for the Goetkind monument is possibly the Last Judgement (circa 1583) recently auctioned at Christie’s, New York, on 28 January 2015 as lot 107 (US$ 220,000). These two variant interpretations of the subject of the Last Judgement are believed to be the originals after which the many known copies were made. A series of the Seven Deadly Sins was bought in Antwerp by Alessandro Farnese’s secretary Cosimo Masi in 1594 and taken to Italy. These paintings are now in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples.