O Gabinete do Advogado (The Lawyer's Cabinet) - Dirck van Delen
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Óleo sobre painel - 44x53
In a high-ceilinged elegantly paneled room with a black and white-chequered floor, the office of a lawyer, an elegant lady discusses a dossier to a lawyer (or possibly notary). Two commoners await their turn and through the open door another richly dressed lady holding a fan is approaching. To the right a clerk is writing up papers while two servants deliver goods such as a hare into a basket. Two children are chasing each other in the front, with a boy holding a mask, as a kind of repoussoir pulling our eye towards the central plan.
At least two paintings, near contemporary, can be discerned above the paneling in the room: a what could be a panoramic, large Hercules Seghers landscape in the centre, and to the right, more difficult to discern, a work depicting a possible sorceress.
The fanciful architecture of the room, inventively combining rich Baroque motifs, such as the sculpted wooden reliefs and the carefully worked out room details, is minutely rendered and possesses the glossy finish typical of Van Delen’s best works from the early 1640s. The subtle treatment of the light, such as that flooding in from the tall windows on the right, silhouetting the two children playing in the foreground, creates masterful chiaroscuro that enhances the atmosphere of the scene. Van Delen has composed this picture in a doubtless conscious evocation of a stage set: in fact the space depicted becomes cogent as if seen through an invisible proscenium arch, the foreground – and presumably us the audience – in shadow, with the actors illuminated theatrically by the strong daylight from the right. It is tempting to assume that Van Delen had in mind the Peasant Lawyer composition by Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564-1636) – given the numbers in which these were produced, it is likely that Van Delen would have been familiar with them. Though set in much more humble surroundings, Brueghel’s organization of his scene offers a clear prototype, with the lawyer seated at his desk at the right, promissory notes and other paperwork pinned to the wall beyond, and clients or supplicants, including an old man leaning on a stick, another holding his hat respectfully and a third bringing produce as payment, having entered from a doorway to the left. Both artists present a moment in a theatrical narrative, although their pictorial technique is so different that it is hard to believe that Pieter Brueghel the Younger was painting his Peasant Lawyer pictures twenty years and less before Van Delen’s masterpiece: they seem to belong to different centuries, and in terms of their pictorial tradition, they do. Different too is the richly attired couple seen in an alcove occupying the centre of the back of the room in Van Delen’s painting. One wonders if they might be having a betrothal agreement drawn up.
Active in the city of Arnemuiden near Middelburg, Dirck van Delen specialized in these highly polished renditions of imaginary architectural scenes and, very much in the practice of the day, he joined forces with various figure painters to populate his grand interiors. His collaboration with Dirck Hals in Haarlem and with the Delft artist Anthonie Palamedesz. (1602-1673) is well documented; the lively figures in the present panel are probably the latter painter’s skillful work.
As often during this period, Van Delen and Palamedesz. have probably been inspired by several iconographic sources. Thus, the centre of the composition, with the figures of the lawyers and the main protagonists, is clearly related to the engraving by Abraham Bosse.
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