Attributed to Gerard van Opstal (Brussels 1605 - 1668 Paris), 17th Century

Christie's London, 2 July 1996, lot 220;

Antony Embden;

From whom acquired by Aso O. Tavitian, 9 March 2005.

The style of the present composition, teeming with the frenzied tangle of writhing bodies, recalls the work of van Opstal’s compatriots Peter Paul Rubens (including his paintings of the same subject) and Francois Duquesnoy, whose reliefs were composed of similarly arranged figures, in the frieze-like manner of Roman sarcophagi. Fourteen of van Opstal's mythological bas-reliefs in marble, similar in style to the present piece, were recorded in his posthumous inventory and were in the Cabinet des Dessins du Roi, later in the Musée du Louvre. Of the reliefs in the Louvre, The Abduction of the Nereids by Tritons (no. 2767), is closest to the present composition in the clash of struggling bodies.

Van Opstal was particularly skilled in the carving of low-relief friezes with classical and mythological themes. He worked not only in stone and marble, but was also an expert in carving ivory reliefs. Theuerkauff remarks¹ that the sheer quantity and varying quality of the reliefs indicates that Van Opstal must have established a workshop to assist in producing them.

¹C. Theuerkauff ed., Europäische Barockplastik am Niederrhein, exhibition catalogue, Kunstmuseum, Dusseldorf, 1971, pp. 384-6, nos. 352-3.

RELATED LITERATURE

G. Bue-Aka, 'Éléments nouveaux concernant la vie et l'oeuvre de Gérard van Opstal, sculpteur ordinaire du roi', in Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de l'Art Français, 1975, pp. 137-46;

H. Bussers ed., La Sculpture au siècle de Rubens dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et la principauté de Liège, exhibition catalogue, Musées royaux d'art et d'histoire, Brussels, 1977, pp. 250-3, nos. 213-7;

V. Beyer and G. Bresc, Au Musée du Louvre, la Sculpture française du XVII siècle, Bergamo, 1977, figs. 29-30;

S. Hoog, Musée National du Château de Versailles - Les Sculptures, I - Le Musée, Paris 1993.