(Antwerp 1581–1642),
Saint Jerome and the Lion in a landscape of ruins,
signed at lower right: FFrannck p., oil on copper, 52.5 x 58 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 13 April 2011, lot 460;
European private collection

The present painting comes with a certificate issued by Ursula Härting, Hamm, (February 2011). Ms Härting, who examined the painting in the original, dates it to the 1620s in Antwerp. To this very date no other version of this composition is known. The landscape in the background was painted by an artist close to Francken who has yet to be identified – probably Paul Bril or Willem van Nieulandt. As to the present painting’s date of execution, reference must have been made to a contemporary source in Antwerp that formulated the type of the lion, which was subsequently reproduced in the works of several artists in Antwerp, such as J. Vos and the two Jan Brueghels. The prototype in question was Peter Paul Rubens’s famous painting Daniel in the Lion’s Den, which in turn relies on a model by Maerten de Vos from 1572. Francken must certainly have known Rubens’s painting, which dates from around 1617 – the lion in our picture is a direct quotation. All of the artistic details in the present painting suggest that this is a work of superior quality dating from Francken’s maturity.