
Poppy Harvey-Jones
Head of Sale
£18,000 - £25,000
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Provenance
Possibly the Count of Mailly-Nesle, Marquis de Rubempre, Prince d'Orange who left it to his only daughter who married Duke Louis d'Arenberg
The Property of a member of the royal house of Wittelsbach, sale, Sotheby's Amsterdam, 17 December 2008, lot 16
Literature
R. Marggraff, Katalog der alteren königlichen Pinakothek zu Műnchen, Munich, 1872, p. 273, cat. no. 1395
Identified by the large basket of roses, Saint Dorothea of Caesaria forms the subject of the present painting. She is listed in the enormously influential Martyrologium Hieronymianum although no information is given other than the day of her martyrdom, the place it occurred, her name and that of Theophilus.
Saint Dorothea was a 4th Century resident of Caesarea, Cappadocia, and the apochryphal account of her martyrdom recounts that she was forced to take a husband but she refused on the grounds that she already considered Christ her bridegroom. She was tortured by the governor and ordered to be executed. On the way to her execution a young lawyer, Theophilus, asked that she send him some fruits from 'the garden' she believed she was soon to enter. After her death an angel presented him with a basket of roses and apples which convinced him to convert to Christianity and he himself was later martyred.
Saint Dorothea with an angel is a mature work by de Crayer of the 1640s. A comparable painting of this period, of similar subject and dimensions, can be found in his Saint Apolline now in the Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.
At the time of the 2008 sale, the attribution to de Crayer was confirmed by Prof. Dr. Hans Vlieghe on the basis of a photograph. He also suggested a date of the 1640s.