Cornelis Saftleven

The Marquis of Lansdowne, Meikleour House;
His sale (The Property of the Marquis of Lansdowne removed from Meikleour House), London, Christie's, 8 July 1994, lot 63;
Where acquired by the present owners.

Greenwich, Connecticut, Bruce Museum of Arts and Science, Pleasures of Collecting:  Part I, Renaissance to Impressionist Masterpieces, 21 September 2002 - 5 January 2003;
Greenwich, Connecticut, Bruce Museum of Arts and Science, Old Master Paintings from the Hascoe Collection, 2 April - 29 May 2005, no. 4.

W. Schulz, Cornelis Saftleven, 1607-1681.  Lebun und Werke mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin and New York 1978, p. 195, no. 531;
P. Sutton, Pleasures of Collecting:  Part I, Renaissance to Impressionist Masterpieces, exh. cat. Bruce Museum, Greenwich 2002, pp. 89-90, reproduced pp. 5 (in detail), 20;
P. Sutton, Old Master Paintings from the Hascoe Collection (exh. cat. Bruce Museum), Greenwich 2005, p. 16, no. 4, reproduced.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on three sections of wood joined horizontally through the upper portion of the picture. The paint layer is stable. There are a few retouches along both of these joins and a few in the book of music and around the magpie in the lower left. However, despite an opaque varnish, no further restorations or damages are identifiable.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The brother of the landscape painter Herman Saftleven, Cornelis was a prolific draftsman and a painter of a wide variety of subject matter, including rustic genre scenes and still lifes, religious subjects, animals, portraits and landscapes.  The present work is a charming example of his delight in satire and outlandish subjects.  In the work, a young man and a child watch from the entryway of a barn as a monkey conducts a chorus of cats.  An owl -- waving a pennant flag -- and a magpie seem to preside over the concert from a perch to the left, while two more owls and additional cats cheer them on.  The cats all wear fine collars -- one even has an elaborate headpiece -- and the barn floor is strewn with playing cards, dice, bottles of alcoholic spirits and other references to sinfulness and idleness.  During the seventeenth century, cats, monkeys and magpies were all viewed as sensual and un-trustworthy animals, while owls, far from being the symbol of wisdom they are today, were signs of ignorance and intemperance.  In fact, "zoo zot als een uyl (as drunk as an owl)" was a popular Dutch idiom, which sprang from the fact that an owl, accustomed to seeing at night, could not see clearly during the day and would stumble around as if intoxicated.  The moral lesson for the two humans who happen upon this scene and for the viewer of Saftleven's painting seems clear enough:  a life of lassitude and indulgence is a wasted, animalistic existence. 

Saftleven painted at least one other version of this scene (Schulz, no. 532), and Schulz (see Literature) was the first to suggest that they may be based upon a lost composition by Jan Brueghel the Elder.  The works also reveal the influence of Saftleven's contemporary, David Teniers the Younger, whose work had a profound influence on him when he travelled to Antwerp in 1632.  A Temptation of Saint Anthony (Private Collection) and The Trial of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. A 1588) are other examples of Saftleven's use of animals to represent sinfulness, frivolity and the darker side of the human psyche.