This catalogue note is based on the research of Paul Huys Janssen, author of the catalogue raisonné of the work of Jan van Bijlert (April 2019).

Jan van Bijlert arrived in Italy shortly after the death of Caravaggio, and on his return to his native Antwerp in 1624, painted in a style that balanced Caravaggism, Dutch realism and the rising trend for Classicism. His figures are more sophisticated than those of either of his contemporaries Gerard van Honthorst or Hendrik ter Brugghen, while his bright palette, with its bold, painterly accents, is typically cast in strong lighting that recalls the tenebrism of Caravaggio himself.

This work, which counts among the artist’s masterpieces, had previously been considered, on the basis on black-and-white photographs, to be a it was believed to be a workshop version of the painting in the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hannover, which is dated to circa 1626-30. However, having seen this remarkable painting in the flesh in 2006, Paul Huys Janssen reinstated it to Bijlert’s oeuvre. It is larger than the Landesmuseum picture, and technical analysis suggests that they were painted side-by-side: when the painting was on loan to the San Francisco Legion of Honor, the museum curators observed: ‘The paint was applied in a straightforward manner to imitate the general appearance of the painting in Hannover, but with a more economical technique. A photoshop overlay of the three [Hannover, present picture and Davis Museum copy] paintings to scale…implies that they were all [painted] using the same cartoon or [that] the [present] and Wellesley paintings were based off of cartoons from the Hannover painting. While the figures align with each other individually, they do not align as a full scene. This is typical for 17th Century Dutch paintings in which artists frequently used multiple cartoons to transfer large compositions that they were replicating…the lack of major changes seems to imply that this painting was painted in direct proximity to the signed version in Hannover.’ (Conservation report, 31 March 2021). This is entirely in keeping with what we know of Bijlert’s working method, as the artist produced a number of autograph replicas of his own compositions, sometimes with only one version – presumably that painted first – signed, or signed and dated. (See, for example, the Venus Chastising Amoretti signed ‘j bijlert fe’, sold Christie’s, London, 8 Dec. 1995, lot 31 and the unsigned version in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.)

Describing the composition, Huys Janssen writes: ‘a group of people gathered around a stone table represent the Five Senses. In the left foreground sits Venus, with Cupid behind her. She points to a mirror and holds a magnifying glass in her other hand, symbolising Sight. Behind her stands a man smelling a pink, representing the sense of Smell. The woman with the lute symbolises the sense of Hearing: the man next to her, feeling a round on his wrist from which blood is streaming, the sense of Touch. The semi-nude boy at the right with a wine glass and a bunch of grapes represents the sense of Taste.’ This figure is the mirror image of that of Lot in Van Baburen’s Lot and his Daughters of 1622.

There is a long tradition of representing the Five Senses in painting and engraving. Bijlert provided his figures with well-known attributes, although the figure of the man with the wound on his wrist, with a thorn on a broken twig piercing the flesh, seems to be the artist’s own invention; the grimace on his face emphasises his pain. Life-size illustrations of the subject are known by Caravaggesque painters such as Louis Finson and Theodoor Rombouts. In this same tradition, in 1651 Herman van Aldewereld painted his Allegory of the Five Senses, now in Schwerin.

Jan van Bijlert was a pupil of his own father, the glass painter Herman van Bijlert, in Utrecht. He was later apprenticed to the painter Abraham Bloemaert. Jan went to France somewhere around 1617 and then to Italy. He is recorded in Rome in 1621. There he was one of the founding members of the Bentveughels, a group of artists originating from the North of Europe, and he was given the nickname Aeneas. In 1624 he returned to his native Utrecht.

As so many other painters staying in Rome, Van Bijlert became influenced by the chiaroscuro painting style of Caravaggio. Caravaggism was the dominant style during the 1610s and 1620s and has had a strong impact on art all over Europe. After his return to Utrecht, Jan van Bijlert painted many compositions in his own typical Caravaggesque style. During the 1630s his style developed, according to the fashion of those days, into a more refined and classical manner. He was at that time much influenced by Gerard van Honthorst (1596 – 1656), a fellow painter and court artist from Utrecht. This development can clearly be seen in Van Bijlert’s history and genre paintings, which form a large part of his oeuvre, as we know it.

There is a copy of the painting in the Jewett Art Center, Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Massachusetts.

Baron Lazzaroni:

This painting belonged to Baron Michele Angelo Lazzaroni, the financier, collector and amateur dealer who lived at Villa Madeleine in Nice. The Lazzaroni family was ennobled by Umberto I in 1879 for services to the financial industry, shortly after Michele was born in Rome in 1863. According to Edward Fowles, Director of the Duveen Brothers’ Paris office, Baron Lazzaroni ‘furnished Duveen’s more Italian pictures than any other person at this time (1920). He was greatly favoured by BB [Bernard Berenson]…’ Lazzaroni, a dilettante painter and restorer himself, owned masterpieces by Bernini, Carlevarijs and others now in the collections of major international museums including the National Gallery, Washington, D.C. and the Getty in Los Angeles. In addition to Villa Madeleine, he owned numerous other grand residences, including Villa Lazzaroni and the Palazzo Grimaldi Lazzaroni in Rome, Castello di Gagliano Aterno in the Province of l’Aquila in Abruzzo, and a home in Paris at 16 rue Spontini.