Signed and dated: "ABEL GRIMER FECIT 1599".
Provenance:
• private collection;
• collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, 1956;
• collection of Alan P. Good,...
read moreSigned and dated: "ABEL GRIMER FECIT 1599".
Provenance:
• private collection;
• collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, 1956;
• collection of Alan P. Good, Oxfordshire, 1953;
• collection of Lady Thomas, Londron, 1927;
• Douwes Gallery, Amsterdam, 1925.
R. de Bertier de Sauvigny observes that this work is derived from the print of the Bearing of the cross attributed to Henry Met de Bles (c.1480-1550), in the collection of the Galleria Doria in Rome, which in turn was based on the Bearing of the cross by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, dated 1564 and on display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Regardless of the exactitude of this reproduction, the picture has been transformed through the typical simplified and schematic formal language of Abel Grimmer. The painter expresses a more poetic manner here, and although he retains the main lines of the two works mentioned above, on the other hand, he abandons the complexity of the presentation and the caricatural depiction of the crowd of figures making up the procession. The fall of Christ and the miracle of the Holy Face are depicted in the centre of the painting, as they would traditionally be placed during the baroque era.
In a landscape shown from an elevated perspective – again very similar to the 16th-century "image of the world", Grimmer presents a highly effective composition with a high horizon, a wide middle section and a foreground constructed of raised platforms which divides the pictorial space and makes it clearly legible. In the foreground, closest to the viewer, spectators stand passively, acting a an element to increase the sense of depth, watching the events from a respectful distance, although this group is hungry for sensation – from the mothers with their children to the curious peasants stationed along the procession’s path.
The middle ground extends, on the right, along the road that leads, uninterrupted, to a cityscape, which must represent Jerusalem. The heightened sense of perspective, the precise and rigorous manner in which the buildings have been rendered and the way that their lines have been pared down reveal the painter’s sensibility as a trained architect. The viewer’s gaze is drawn to the central scene, slightly set to the left, in which Christ carries his cross. The stone road curves in wide arcs towards the hill of Mount Golgotha, vanishing into the distance at the top of the plateau where the crucifixion will take place and where tiny figures and crosses can be seen. The background consists of the silhouettes of mountains that vanish into the misty glow of the sky. The human column, which has reached the edges of the holy city, winds its way up the mountain, in the ascending motion that dominates the composition, the dynamic force of which formally unites the various elements, figures, events and motives.
The subtle colour scheme is very attractive, with the pale blues accentuated by the reds and browns of the figures’ clothing. This Way to calvary is highly similar in composition, to the signed version at the Groeningemuseum in Bruges.
Circa 1570 - Antwerp - 1618
Abel Grimmer, a painter from Antwerp, was the son of the landscape-painter Jacob Grimmer, with whom he carried out an apprenticeship before acceptance as a Master of...
read moreCirca 1570 - Antwerp - 1618
Abel Grimmer, a painter from Antwerp, was the son of the landscape-painter Jacob Grimmer, with whom he carried out an apprenticeship before acceptance as a Master of the Guild of the Painters of Saint Luke in 1592.
He was the specialist of series devoted to the Four Seasons and Twelve Months, which resemble panel transpositions of miniaturist calendars.
He was a contemporary of Pieter Brueghel the Younger and, like him, though in a highly personal fashion, interpreted certain engravings and models designed by Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Hans Bol. He thus remained deeply attached to the spirit and rather archaic conception of the XVI century.
He is characterized by strict, precise graphics, a synthetic vision of nature following in the foot-path of the primitives and miniature painters, a composition with schematic lines, and great subtility in the choice and juxtaposition of the tones.
If we hardly knew the extent of his work, it may be said of him that he “simplified nature with a charming, poetic naivity, together with a great mastery of workmanship”. His pictorial style, which combines a highly personal realism of the landscape with a stylisation of nature and architectures, today appears strangely modern to us.
