PIETER MULIER, CALLED CAVALIERE TEMPESTA | Pan and Syrinx in a river landscape

Dietlinde Weinmüller, Tegernsee;

Deposited at Kloster Maria Eck, Siegsdorf, Bavaria;

Transferred by the Allies to the Munich Central Collecting Point on 13 June 1946 (inv. no. Mü 32508);

Released from the Munich Central Collecting Point on 17 December 1948;

Anonymous sale, Munich, Auktion Adolph Weinmüller, 2 May 1956, lot 1269;

Private collection, Germany;

Anonymous sale, Cologne, Van Ham, 13 May 2011, lot 583.

M. Roethlisberger-Bianco, Cavalier Pietro Tempesta and his time, Delaware 1970, p. 113, cat. no. 291, reproduced fig. 291.

Pieter Mulier the Younger trained in Haarlem under his father, a renowned marine painter. Though he began by painting similar subject matters, Mulier the Younger soon gravitated towards landscapes. Indeed, his work forms an important bridge between the earlier classical landscapes of Gaspard Dughet and Claude Lorrain and the later work of Marco Ricci, while also encompassing some of the drama of Salvator Rosa. The present composition - with a framing tree trunk on the left, and a cluster of trees at the centre with views beyond on either side - recalls many landscapes of the Frankenthal school from circa 1600.