Dirck de Quade van Ravesteyn

The Virgin and Child with Angels making music

oil on canvas
61 ¼ x 44 1/8 inches (155.5 x 112cm.)
           

Provenance:  
Fideikommis Wesendonk Collection , with Philippe de Beisac, Wiesbaden, 1962;
Collection of Dr. H.C. and Mrs. Erich G. Henkel

Literature:     
E. Fučíková, ‘Studien zur Rudolfinischen Kunst: Addenda et Corrigenda’, Umeni, 1979, xxvii, pp. 489-514.
T. DaCosta Kaufmann, L’Ecole de Prague, Paris, 1985, p. 264, no. 16.10, illustrated.
T. DaCosta Kaufmann, The School of Prague, Painting at the Court of Rudolf II, Chicago and London, 1988, p. 223, no. 16.10, illustrated.

Son of Claes Quade van Raversteyn, Dirck was born probably circa 1565-1570 in the northern Netherlands, where the Raversteyn family of painters including the Hague portraitist Jan Anthonisz. Van Ravesteyn  was active.   He is recorded in Rudolf II’s service from 1589, when he is mentioned in a Hofzahlamtsrechnung as a Hofmaler receiving a monthly slary of eight gulden.  On  September 1, 1593 his salary was raised to ten gulden per month. In 1594 he perhaps accompanied the Emperor to a Reichstag in Regensburg.

Van Ravesteyn seems to have been a man of some economic status in Prague, as he is documented as owning property in the Malá Strana (Kleinseite) in 1598, and as lending large sums of money in 1598 and 1602.  He received payments from court until January 31, 1599, when he was called gewester hofmaller and his salary was transferred to his cousins Claes and Paul de Quade van Ravesteyn.  On August 28, 1599 he was paid sixteen gulden twenty kreuzen by Prince Karl van Liechtenstein for a portrait.  On June 14, 1600 he was paid for work done for Count Heinrich von Fürstenberg.  He is mentioned as Contrafetter und Maler (portraitist and painter) in a list of court artists of circa 1600, and again listed in 1602.  He received court payments for the last time in 1608 and probably returned to The Netherlands thereafter.  Van Ravesteyn was probably still alive in 1619, when he is mentioned as creditor of the deceased emperors Rudolf and Matthias.  He is thought to have died sometime after the date of 1619.

Besides his own independent compositions, Van Ravesteyn also added the staffage to paintings by Hans Paul Vredemann de Vries.

In 2006 Dr. Eliska Fučíková re-confirmed the attribution of the present work to Van Ravesteyn and dates the painting to the artist’s late period at the court of Rudolf II. She makes note of the composition’s close resemblance to Van Ravesteyn’s Instruments of the Passion (“St. Veronica”)(Prague, National Gallery) and Allegory on the Reign of Rudolf II (1603, Prague, National Gallery) in its motifs and figure types.  The introduction of some newer facial types recalling Barocci and Jan Massys indicates that Van Ravesteyn was probably responding to works in Rudolf’s collections, and may suggest a slightly date later than 1603.