CLAES CORNELISZ MOEYAERT Lot n° 36

(Durgerdam, 1592 - Amsterdam, 1655) Christ on the road to Emmaus Monogram CL M at lower right Oil on panel, 38X62 cm Provenance: London, Christie's, July 5, 1991, lot 317 (as Claes Cornelisz Moeyaert) Cologne, Lempertz, November 18, 2016, lot 1028 (as Claes Cornelisz Moeyaert) Private collection Bibliography: RKD: https://rkd.nl/imageslite/541395 (as Claes Cornelisz Moeyaert) The son of an aristocratic Amsterdam merchant, Claes Cornelisz Moeyaert became one of the most important and prolific Dutch artists of his time. We have no records pertaining to his training, but he probably visited Italy as denoted by some of his creations and the panel under review. The artist's early style, simple and sometimes rigid, followed the manner of Adam Elsheimer and Pieter Lastman by devoting himself to the historical and mythological genre, setting the scenes in landscapes bathed in clear, warm light (see I. Wittrock, Abraham Calling. A motif in some paintings by Pieter Lastman and Claes Moeyaert, Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, 43 (1974), pp. 8-19). To this moment refers our very Italianate work in terms of theme and atmospheric sensibility, which does not show the chiaroscuro and Caravaggesque development that his production would later take on, looking to the examples of Rembrandt. The work is accompanied by critical entries by Ferdinando Arisi and Raffaella Colace.