(Antwerps, 1582 – 1662 ibid.)
Landscape with fortified port
Oil on panel, doubled
Painted around 1605, probably in Middelburg.
32.5 x 42.5 cm / 12,8 x 16,7 in
Expertise:
Dr. Klaus Ertz, Lingen, 12 March 2020
From an elevated position the observer looks at a strange coastal formation. A headland lined with rocks leads to a tower rising towards the sky. Several buildings –maybe storage rooms– are depicted behind the tower. Around the headland the artist also pictures moving water and shores lined with architectural elements. An earlier attribution to Schoubroeck makes it clear how much Stalbemt in his early years was influenced by him, but also by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Paul Bril.
We agree with Dr. Ertz when he says: "This wooden panel has everything that makes a van Stalbemt". The high painterly quality is just as convincing as the complicated spatial interlacing and the motifs, which are spatially very different from one another.
Dr. Ertz dated our painting around 1605. It is possible that this "Landscape with fortified port" is one of the earliest known paintings by the artist. There are no paintings of him securely dated before 1604.
Comparative literature:
Ertz / Nitze-Ertz: Adriaen van Stalbemt, Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Lingen 2018, Flämische Maler im Umkreis der großen Meister, Band 11.