Late 17th Century, Flemish School, The Noble Party

Late 17th century, Flemish school

The Noble Party

Oil on canvas, cm 48 x 63

With frame, cm 68 x 86

In this beautiful painting, a festive company of gentlemen and noblewomen converses drinking wine and enjoying seasonal fruits in a pleasant and arcadian natural landscape. The bright colours and the minutia and skill in rendering the details recall the works of the great Flemish masters of the Golden Age. The iconographic theme of the banquet is not, at the end of the seventeenth century, new to art history: Egyptian, Etruscan and Pompeian frescoes, depict guests surrounded by luxury and beauty, mutated forms of the mythological "banquet of the gods". Among the most famous interpreters of this iconographic topos is certainly Veronese, author of extraordinary beauty banquets exhibited in the most famous museum institutions worldwide. The theme of the banquet, which in Italy reached its best results in the sixteenth century, enjoys a renewed popularity in the second half of the seventeenth century north of the Alps. This is evidenced by the works of artists such as David Tenier the Younger, David Vinckboons, Pieter van der Plans and Hendrick Govaerts: the latter artist, who during his training period stayed at the Polish court in Prague, Remaining particularly fascinated by the pomp and opulence of those realities, insists on the rendering of precious fabrics and the splendor of the architectures that surround the characters. The theme of open-air banquets, practiced especially in the 17th century, proved to be successful in Flanders even in the 18th century.