XIII - Paintings and Drawings - Marty de Cambiaire

Pauwels Franck, called Paolo Fiammingo
Antwerp ca. 1540 – Venice 1596
Fishing and Duck Hunting Scene
Oil on canvas
87,5 x 114 cm (34 1 /2 x 44 7 /8 in.)
Although listed in the Antwerp Guild of Painters in 1561, Pauwels
Franck, called Paolo Fiammingo, was in Venice in 1573, which
is confirmed by the date on a print by Gaspare Oselli after a
Penitent Magdalen by “Paulus francisci Antwerpis”. According
to Stefania Mason Rinaldi, the artist seems to have previously
gone to Florence, where he may have worked in the circle of
Jan van der Straet, called Giovanni Stradano 1 . The painter and
biographer of Venetian artists Carlo Ridolfi wrote that among all
the artists aspiring to join Tintoretto’s atelier, the master chose
only those candidates who could be of real use to him. “Among
those were Paolo Fiamingo (sic.) and Martin de Vos, who were
of use for landscape backgrounds in his works” 2 . Thus, around
1578, Paolo Fiammingo began to collaborate with Tintoretto
probably for the execution of the landscape background for
St. Roch in the Desert (Church of San Rocco). In the 1580s,
the important banker from Munich Hans Fugger commissioned
him with an entire cycle for his castle at Kirchheim in Bavaria.
Fiammingo’s Florentine experience and his knowledge of the
Studiolo of Francesco I proved essential for the execution of
these works. It is probably around 1582 that he received his
first commission for the oratory of the San Nicolò della Lattuga
o dei Frari, which included the Pietà with St. Andrew and St.
Nicholas (today in the Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice), four
organ panels representing Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel (on deposit
at the Venice Prefettura) and a Predication of St. John the Baptist
(had been long considered lost and found in the deposit of the
Pinacoteca di Brera). This prestigious commission established
his reputation. For the city of Venice, he painted such works as
Pope Alexander III Blesses Doge Sebastiano Ziani in the Great
Council Hall of the Doges’ Palace. For the Munich bankers,
he painted a Triumph of the Elements and the Allegories of the
Planets and the four Allegories of Loves.
If Paolo Fiammingo’s contemporaries remarked his particular
talent for landscape, it was due to his skilful combination of
the Flemish concept of perspective with the bucolical and
pastoral atmosphere of Venetian painting. “But above all other
thing Paolo excelled in painting landscapes; which he painted
in a such a graceful manner and with such naturalism that no
Flemish painter had ever mastered,” passed his obviously partial
judgement Ridolfi. Strange perspectives are characteristic of his
late works, in which he experimented with new, often different
from each other solutions. Views from above or from bottom to
top, sometimes bird’s eye views, would sometimes be obstructed
in the middle by copses of trees or, on the contrary, opening on
a central circle. Sometimes they would be split in several paths
giving the impression of passages amidst rocks and clusters of
trees. Such is the case of the present composition: on the right,
a path runs between two groves leading to a distant house
overlooking the hills, while on the left, the course of a river
passes between factories and clusters of trees and then runs
under a large bridge of a rather extravagant shape. In this kind
of composition, the figures wander sometimes in rather strange
positions, as if they were elegantly placed on the surface of
the canvas. Although Flemish influence prevails in the artist’s
choice of composition, his colours are warm, his brush is fluent
and his touch is highly Venetian.
Hunting and fishing subjects seem to have particularly
interested the artist towards the end of his career. They
allow the painter to combine within one work a landscape,
a genre scene and sometimes a still life, as it is the case
of the present work or a Hunting Allegory which shows
peasants plucking ducks 3 . The figures in the foreground are
rather large in scale in relation to the whole setting. Crimson
and yellow colours of their clothes relate to those of the
figures in The Age of Bronze and The Age of Iron 4 . Other
figures, whether placed on the bridge or seated at a distance
holding the shotgun between his legs, are considerably
smaller in scale and treated in grisaille, as if distance erased
colour. Their presence serves a purely decorative purpose
and is used to animate the surrounding landscape and for
the pleasure of the eyes. The treatment of the vegetation
is typical of the artist’s work. The depth and motion of the
foliage have been created by the superposition of several
layers of greens applied from the darkest to the lightest shade
and by the accurate drawing of the leaves on the surface.
The volume of the trunk has been created by thin circular
strokes of yellow and grey which cover the underlying layer.
Fiammingo frequently used these techniques in his paintings
with the utmost domination of landscape, such as in Diane
Hunting today in the Museum of Fine Arts of Nancy.
There is another version of this scene, in a more rapidly
sketched technique, formerly at the gallery Zabert, Turin (13 th
catalogue, 1978, No. 17). Certain details are missing in it,
such as, for example, that of the heron reflected in the water.
The colours of clothes are different, and the secondary figures
do not have the same accessories, the ducks and fish have
not been depicted in detail. The present work with its higher
degree of finish and more careful execution is undoubtedly
subsequent to this version. We would like to thank Professor
Alessandro Ballarin for his help in identification the author of
the painting as Paolo Fiammingo.
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