MATTHIEU VAN PLATTENBERG Lot n° 106

(Antwerp, 1608-Paris, 1660) Fortune of the Sea Oil on canvas, cm 31.5X50 Provenance: Milan, private collection The paintings exhibit high quality, beautifully evoking atmospheric phenomena achieved through a lively and at times scratchy pictorial ductus in depicting waves and the coastal landscape. On the basis of Malvasia's mention in La Felsina Pittrice (1678) of a Monsignor Rinaldo della Montagna, Luigi Lanzi in his Storia Pittorica (1792 ; 1809) believed he could identify the artist mentioned in several sources with a Dutch pittor di mare, later always called Monsù Montagna or Renaud de la Montagne. After the publication of Roethlisberger Bianco's monograph devoted to the Cavalier Tempesta, the artist is now correctly recognized as the Flemish painter Matthieu van Plattenberg, born in Antwerp in 1608, a pupil of Andries van Eertvelt, known precisely as Platte-Montagne or Montagne. Reference bibliography: M. Roethlisberger Bianco, Cavalier Pietro Tempesta and his time, University of Delaware, Newark 1970, ad vocem J. Thuillier, Mathieu Montaigne, natif d'Anvers, in A. Balis, F. Baudouin et al, Rubens and his world, bijdragen, études, Studies, Beiträge, Antwerp 1985, pp. 279; 288