Solomon de Bray Pero - allegory of charity Oil... Lot 2039

Solomon de Bray Pero - allegory of charity Oil on wood. 63 x 48 cm (oval). Expert opinion Pieter Biesboer, Haarlem, March 2018. Literature For comparison, see Pieter Biesboer (ed.): Painting Family: The De Brays. Master Painters of the 17th-Century Holland, 2008. Pieter Biesboer was responsible for the 2008 exhibition at the Haarlem Frans Hals Museum on the De Bray family of painters. The catalog, edited at the time with Fred C. Meijer and Friso Lammertse, is still the reference work for these important Haarlem artists. The present painting shows a woman with bared breast and upturned gaze. She wears a fine linen shirt with a red half unbuttoned bodice over it. Her dark blond upswept hair is held in place by a braided silk ribbon. This female portrait does not appear to be a portrait of a specific woman, but rather, because of the shy and dignified posture, an allegorical figure, identifiable as Pero because of the bared breast. Pero fed her imprisoned and condemned to starvation father Cimon in his cell and thus saved him from death. Since then she was considered a symbol of female charity and a moral example. The story described by Valerius Maximus in his work "Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium" has repeatedly inspired painters from the 16th to the 19th century: from Rubens to Jansens, Baburen and Pieter van Mol to Jean-Baptiste Greuze in France and Johann Zoffany in England. Salomon de Bray apparently had a certain preference for such symbolic figures; on several occasions he also depicted Hagar and Semiramis in similarly composed paintings. We thank Dr. Pieter Biesboer for confirming this painting as the work of Salomon de Bray.