Jacob Duck

The present picture is an unpublished autograph version by Jacob Duck of a larger composition in the Musée du Louvre in Paris.¹ This guardroom scene, set within the interior of an old Romanesque church, depicts officers and soldiers in the company of a seated woman, with an eclectic display of precious objects and looted goods strewn at their feet. This fragment corresponds to the right side of the Louvre picture, which offers a more expansive view of the church interior to include a second group of merrymakers on the opposite side of the nave in front of a similar niche. An examination of the present panel suggests that, at one point, it was likely trimmed along the top edge and that the original painting, probably corresponding in whole with the Louvre version, was split into two or three smaller compositions. There is at least one other known instance of a Duck guardroom scene having been altered to create two separate compositions presented as pendants.²

^We are grateful to Dr. Jochai Rosen for endorsing the attribution of the present lot on the basis of digital photographs.

¹ Inv. no. 1228, oil on panel, 55.5 by 84.5 cm.

² See J. Rosen, Jacob Duck c. 1600-1667, Catalogue Raisonné, Amsterdam 2017, p. 124, cat. no. 18.