(Antwerp 1603–1676)
The Feast of Bacchus,
oil on canvas, 162 x 208.5 cm, framed

We are grateful to Klaus Ertz for confirming the authenticity of the present work by Simon de Vos upon examination of the present painting in the original. A written certificate is available.

Klaus Ertz about the versatile oeuvre of Simon de Vos: “However, he also depicted merry- and music-making parties exhibiting distinct resemblances to the widely spread Dutch genre of the theme in question. It is in these examples that Dutch ideas in the style of Palamedesz. mingle with the diversified palette and Baroque sweep of Peter Paul Rubens [...]”

In order to corroborate the attribution of this – previously unknown and unsigned – painting to Simon de Vos, Ertz compares it to the painter’s following autograph works:

(1) The Parable of the Prodigal Son, 1630s (Musée Calvet, Avignon);
(2) Allegory of the Five Senses (sale Sotheby’s Amsterdam, 18th May 2010, lot 18);
(3) The Triumph of Bacchus, late 1630s (sale, Christie’s, London, 5th July 1991);
(4) The Triumph of Bacchus in India, late 1630s (sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 2nd October 2002, lot 161);
(5) The Massacre of the Innocents, dated 1647 (with Rafael Valls, London)

For his Bacchus scenes, De Vos particularly relied on the Triumphal Procession of Bacchus by Maerten van Heemskerck (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Ertz concludes: “The painting to be assessed, The Feast of Bacchus, is a highly important autograph work by Simon de Vos executed in Antwerp in the late 1630s.”