Diógenes com sua Lanterna Procurando um Homem Honesto (Diogenes with his Lantern Looking for an Honest Man) - Pieter van Mol

 

Diógenes com sua Lanterna Procurando um Homem Honesto (Diogenes with his Lantern Looking for an Honest Man) - Pieter van Mol
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This arresting Flemish Caravaggesque painting of Diogenes looking for an Honest Man is an unrivalled masterpiece from the brush of Pieter van Mol, a relatively unknown artist from the orbit of Rubens in Antwerp. Perhaps the reason for Van Mol’s obscurity is the fact that he spent most of his career working in Paris and not in his native Antwerp. Born nearly eight months after Van Dyck in Antwerp in 1599, Van Mol likely apprenticed with Artus Wolffert. and probably accompanied Rubens to Paris in 1625, when the master travelled there for the commission of the Medici Cycle in the Luxembourg Palace. Van Mol found success in Paris, as he received many commissions in the French capital and became court painter to the King (1637) and Queen (1642) of France; in 1648 the painter was among the founding members of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts.
While Van Mol’s oeuvre is replete with paintings of excellent quality, this picture is surely the artist’s strongest work. It was a celebrated treasure in several prominent French collections, beginning with Paul-Henri-Thiry, baron d’Holbach, a French-German author and Enlightenment philosopher. The painting was twice purchased at auction by famous collector and dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, the husband of celebrated portraitist Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. It also belonged to François-Pascal Haudry, called Président Haudry, the president of the finance bureau in Orléans and owner of one of the best art collections outside of Paris. Around 1804 the present lot entered the collection of Lucien Bonaparte, who brought it from Paris to Rome during his self-imposed exile in The Eternal City. In a list of Bonaparte’s collection compiled in 1804, the painting is described as hanging in the most important room, the “Prima Sallone.” In the first catalogue of this collection from 1808, there appears an engraving after the painting by Giovanni Folo. Lucien then escaped to Britain in 1809 but returned to Rome after his brother’s abdication in 1814. He retained his collection as long as he could, but financial pressures forced him to apply for an export permit for this painting in 1825. At that time the picture was almost certainly shipped back to Paris, where it was purchased by Baron de Rothschild and remained in the Rothschild family for over 170 years, until its sale at Sotheby’s New York in 1997, when it was purchased by the present owner.
Although this is Van Mol’s masterpiece it fits into his oeuvre quite comfortably. A large painting by Van Mol in Orléans depicts the same subject and includes a similar grizzly and grey-bearded old man as the figure of Diogenes, again holding the lantern. In fact, the waves in the hair and beard in both portrayals are nearly identical, suggesting that Van Mol might have been working from a sketch after life that he prepared beforehand. A candidate for this sketch is the study in the museum in Rouen. The artist worked out this revision of the subject very carefully, as demonstrated by a preparatory drawing in Frankfurt, also at knee-length.
As inspiration for the present painting, Van Mol could have recalled several sketches by Rubens. The bearded man on the far left could refer back to the first head on the left in Rubens’ Head Studies of Bearded Man in Libourne, while the old woman in the center could have its roots in Rubens’ Study of an Old Woman, which sold at Sotheby’s London in 2017. Finally, the bearded old man who served as the model of Diogenes harks back to several sketches by Rubens, such as the figure on the right in the double head study in Dayton. In all of these borrowings Van Mol is not slavishly imitating Rubens. Instead, he is emulating the great master and seamlessly integrating these influences into a work that is entirely his own.
Diogenes of Sinope was an ancient Greek philosopher from the 4th century B.C. and founder of the Cynic school of philosophy; he despised wealth and would walk around Athens begging in public, openly criticizing those whom he encountered, and so it is said “paying homage to no one,” not even Alexander the Great, whom he boldly asked to step aside, out of the path of his sunlight. His life was documented by his namesake, Diogenes Laërtius, in the Lives of the Philosophers, which appeared in an Italian edition in Venice in 1611 (Dell vite de’ filosofi di Dioigenes Laertio). In this text it is explained that Diogenes “walked around with a lantern by day and said, ''I am looking for an [honest] man.” The narrative was only occasionally depicted in Flemish Baroque art, although as we know Van Mol painted the story at least twice.
Although largely preserved in private collections for most of its history, this painting was copied on canvas, probably when the original was still in France in the 17th century, assuming that the artist brought it with him when he moved from Antwerp to Paris, or indeed if he executed the outstanding original during his French period.