Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 90-91.(Budapest, 1999)
NÉMETH, ISTVÁN: Musical Company
from 1632, now at the Sinebrychoff Art Museum in Helsinki. 33 With respect to its compositional peculiarities and the total number of figures the Karlsruhe painting shows especially close parallels to the genre picture under discussion. The Budapest painting also has close stylistic analogies in a genre picture with numerous figures at the Castle Museum in Nottingham, 34 and in 'àMusical Companyby Palamedesz. in the collection of the Ermitage at St Petersburg, 3 '' as well as in a work depicting a group of musicplaying merrymakers by the same artist at a Cologne auction in 1993. 36 Although the list of analogies could go on, we feel that the examples mentioned thus far are sufficient enough to prove that the Musical Company discussed here is in fact a work by Anthonie Palamedesz. painted in the 1630s. We have seen numerous instances of a signature by itself not constituting decisive proof when the identity of the painter becomes doubtful as a result of stylistic peculiarities or other questions that arise. We face such a problem in the case of a genre picture at the Museum of Fine Arts that has been tentatively attributed to Palamedesz. 37 and which, on the basis of its motifs, fits quite well into the thematic group we have been discussing (fig. 87). Among the members of the depicted company our attention is first and foremost directed to the seated man playing a lute in the foreground on the right, as he sends a look of longing toward the elegant lady with a feathered hat, who stands next to him. This young woman, resting her left hand on the back of a chair, returns the musician's glance. The painting, primarily because of these two figures, emanates a certain air of melancholy. In front of the table, on the left, wearing a breastplate and a feathered hat, stands a soldier with his back to us. At the two ends of the table pipe-smoking men are seated, the landlady between them is in the act of refilling their cups. In the background a man is about to enter through an open door; in the left foreground a cat reclines on the floor, and on the right, there is a vessel for cooling wine. Although in the lower right corner, in front of the wine vessel, the signature "A Palamedesz f." is clearly legible, doubts about the painting's authorship had already emerged earlier. 38 And quite rightly so, for the painting technique of Company in a Room, as well as the typology of the individual figures indeed show only superficial resemblances to authenticated works by Anthonie Palamedesz. However, while we cannot find a single convincing parallel among the works of the above Dutch master, the painting shows a large number of similarities to certain pictures by the Flemish artist Christoph Jacobsz. van der Lamen (Antwerp 1605/6 - Antwerp 1651/52). This painter is thought to have been a student of Frans Francken II, but his genre scenes 33 Inv. no. S 121. See: Supinen, M., The Fine Arts Academy of Finland, Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Helsinki 1988, 86; also: The Beer King of Helsinki, The Czarina's Personal Physician and Dutch Old Masters, Helsinki (Museum of Foreign Art Sinebrychoff) 1994-95. 20, fig. 10. 34 About this paiting by Palamedesz. see: Images of a Golden Age. Dutch Seventeenth-Century Paintings, Birmingham 1989, 107. Cat. no. 81. 35 Inv. no. 897. See: Kuznetsov, Y. - Linnik. I., Dutch Painting iti Soviet Museums, New York Leningrad 1982, No. 70. 36 Lempertz, Cologne. 20 November 1993, No. 1005. Plate XXII. 37 Oil on canvas, 58 x 83 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Inv. no. 58.49. 38 Andor Pigler had already questioned the attribution to Anthonie Palamedesz. See: Pigler, op. cit. (Note 6) 524. It is strange that the catalogue makes no mention of the signature in the painting.
