Lot Essay
This composition derives from the painting by Peter Paul Rubens now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Rubens's original was once in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, and the present small-scale copy may have been one of several hundred such replicas of works in the Archduke's collection made by Teniers. These were engraved and published in 1660 at the Archduke's behest, resulting in the famous Theatrum pictorium or Theater of Painting, one of the earliest extant catalogues of a significant art collection.