Jan Janssens

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 work is in lovely and fresh condition. It has certainly not been cleaned or restored for many years. The stretcher is quite visibly warped now, and while the old lining to the canvas is stabilizing the paint layer, the cracking is quite visibly raised throughout. In order to best present the picture, the lining and the stretcher should be changed. Under ultraviolet light, the old dirt layer and varnishes hide any restorations that may exist. The original canvas may be joined down the left side and possibly even the right side. The only area where the cracking is more intense is in the darkest colors in the kneeling figure in the lower left, and there may be old restored losses here. The face of the disciple gazing upwards in the lower center seems to have been restored, and there is a slightly crude element to his features as a result.
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This Resurrection of Christ is probably a reduced autograph version of Jan Janssens' signed and dated (1640) altarpiece in Sint-Salvatorskathedraal, Bruges.¹  Born in Ghent in 1590, Janssens traveled to ltaly, where he is documented in Rome between 1619 and 1620. He soon came into contact with works of the already established Utrecht artists Gerrit van Honthorst (1592-1656) and Dirck van Baburen (circa 1594-1624). Those artists had already achieved a high level of success, and both had attracted commissions from some of the leading patrons of the day, such as Cardinal Scipione Borghese and Vincenzo Giustiniani. Their financial success would not have gone unnoticed by Janssens, and he was swift to emulate their style. Baburen was to exert the stronger influence, and Janssens was even to copy his compositions (and in some cases pass them off as his own). In 1621 he returned to Ghent and enrolled in the Guild of Saint Luke and continued to produce pictures in the Caravaggesque manner. He built a successful practice particularly painting altarpieces, such as the prime version of the present picture, for the churches in and around Ghent. We are grateful to Frits Duparc and Wayne Franits for their assistance in the cataloguing of this lot. 

1. Jan de Maere, llustrated Dictonary of 17th century Flemish painting, vol l, Brussels 1994, p. 231, reproduced vol. ll, fig. 656, reproduced.