DOI article:
Tomalak, Mirosław: Two Unknown Paintings by Lodewijk Toeput and Joos de Momper the Younger
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.72800#0145
Mirosław
Tomalak
The only major difference between the painting from Warsaw and this drawing
is the absence of Apollo in the latter work.
Fig. 7. Lodewijk Toeput, Summer landscape (August), 80s of the 16th century - about 1590?,
drawing, National Gallery of Art in Washington, repr. public domain
Other drawings: the spring month of May from Yale University and the
autumn month of October from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, are cer-
tainly projects of compositions of paintings which, together with the paintings
from the Warsaw collection, formed one set of the four seasons.
If we take into account a traditional model of artists' cooperation and work-
shop practice, according to which one of them was responsible for the figural
scene and/or staffage, and the other for the landscape, it seems highly plau-
sible that the Warsaw paintings formed a part of one of Pozzoserrato's com-
missions for a season series. It seems most likely that the artists shared unsold
(for unknown reasons) paintings in connection with Joos de Momper's return
to Antwerp. The fact that Joos de Momper brought only two paintings can be
proved by a pair of paintings depicting winter and summer, which, although very
similar, are a simplified version of the Warsaw paintings. These are two copies
by Joos's nephew Frans de Momper16 executed probably in the 1620s, at the very
beginning of his career. It is hardly possible that both Joos and Frans's pictures of
the two remaining seasons disappeared. In comparison with the originals, their
repetitions lack mythological figures. Such a change, which we could already see
in the drawing from the Fitzwilliam Museum, illustrates the general tendency
16 At Sotheby's London 3.12.1997 lot 64. Exhibited: Leonard Koetser Gallery, London, Octo-
ber 1972, no. 32.
144
Tomalak
The only major difference between the painting from Warsaw and this drawing
is the absence of Apollo in the latter work.
Fig. 7. Lodewijk Toeput, Summer landscape (August), 80s of the 16th century - about 1590?,
drawing, National Gallery of Art in Washington, repr. public domain
Other drawings: the spring month of May from Yale University and the
autumn month of October from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, are cer-
tainly projects of compositions of paintings which, together with the paintings
from the Warsaw collection, formed one set of the four seasons.
If we take into account a traditional model of artists' cooperation and work-
shop practice, according to which one of them was responsible for the figural
scene and/or staffage, and the other for the landscape, it seems highly plau-
sible that the Warsaw paintings formed a part of one of Pozzoserrato's com-
missions for a season series. It seems most likely that the artists shared unsold
(for unknown reasons) paintings in connection with Joos de Momper's return
to Antwerp. The fact that Joos de Momper brought only two paintings can be
proved by a pair of paintings depicting winter and summer, which, although very
similar, are a simplified version of the Warsaw paintings. These are two copies
by Joos's nephew Frans de Momper16 executed probably in the 1620s, at the very
beginning of his career. It is hardly possible that both Joos and Frans's pictures of
the two remaining seasons disappeared. In comparison with the originals, their
repetitions lack mythological figures. Such a change, which we could already see
in the drawing from the Fitzwilliam Museum, illustrates the general tendency
16 At Sotheby's London 3.12.1997 lot 64. Exhibited: Leonard Koetser Gallery, London, Octo-
ber 1972, no. 32.
144