JAN CHRISTIAENSZ MICKER | THE WIDE AND NARROW ROAD, AN ALLEGORY

Mr. and Mrs. Frederik Wagner-de Wit, The Hague, until 1954;

By whom bequeathed to the Wagner-de Wit Foundation, Maastricht, until 2013 (inv. no. 632)

Maastricht, Museum het Spaans Gouvernement, now Museum aan het Vrijthof, until 2012 (inv. no. 0339).

Though little is know of Jan Micker's life, he depicted this biblical subject taken from the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 7:13-14) on various occasions.¹

A note on the Provenance:

This painting was owned by Frederik Hendrik Wagner and Adrienne Ambrosina de Wit, avid collectors of paintings and decorative arts from the Hague. In 1954, they moved their collection to the Museum het Spaans Gouvernement, Maastricht. With this move, their collection grew particularly in the areas of 18th century decorative art that had a connection to both Maastricht and region. In light of this, the Wagner-de Wit Foundation decided to sell the collection of 16th and 17th century Southern Netherlandish paintings, which had no future in the museum’s present vision of becoming the municipal museum of Maastricht.

^1. Oil on panel, 46 by 63 cm. See https://rkd.nl/explore/images/6772.