(Antwerp 1581–1641)
The Last Supper,
oil on canvas, 107.5 x 160 cm, framed

Provenance:
Neboklooster, Nijmegen;
Private Collection, The Netherlands

We are grateful to Hans Vlieghe for confirming the attribution to Artus Wolffort and workshop on the basis of photographs.

The present Last Supper is a rich and varied composition by Artus Wolffort, an important practitioner of the Flemish Baroque, who like his contemporary Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), trained under Otto van Veen (1566–1629), the noted Antwerp Classicist painter who was dean of the city’s Confrerie van Romanisten. Another version of the present work exists, also executed with the participation of Wolffort’s workshop and likely commissioned for the Convent of the Franciscans, Ahrweiler, Rheinland-Pfalz, (sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 24 April 2018, lot 49, sold for €50,000 incl. premium).

The attractiveness of such a work for the dining rooms of the many guilds and refectories of the religious orders and confraternities of the Counter-Reformation is readily apparent: The contrapposto positioning of the two apostles with their back to the picture plane draws on the Italianate manner of van Veen, while the multiplicity of heads around the table exhibits the Flemish art of keeping multiple head studies or tronies in the workshop for use in compositions such as these. The symphonies of colour in the drapery of the disciples also bears witness to the artistic exchanges between North and South of the Alps.

Hans Vlieghe dates these compositions of the Last Supper to the years around 1630, and compares the heads of the apostles to other types found in the artist’s paintings. Vlieghe also notes that the different versions of this work are evidence that Wolffort was sought after enough to have established a workshop. One of his most accomplished pupils was Peter van Lint (1609–1690).