Attributed to Michael Sweerts

(Brussels 1618-1664 Goa)

The Baptism of Christ

Footnotes

Provenance
Ivar Hellberg, Stockholm, before 1946, by whom offered
Sale, Stockholms Stads Auktionsverk, Stockholm, 24 November 1998, lot 1419

Literature
R. Kultzen, dissertation, Hamburg, 1954, p. 93, no. 45
R. Kultzen, Michael Sweerts, Doornspijk, 1996, p. 137, cat. no. R15, ill, p. 171 (as rejected work)

Until 1998 The Baptism was in a Swedish private collection and was only known from an old black and white photograph. Since its subsequent conservation it has been accepted by Lindsey Shaw-Miller as 'an outstanding work from Sweerts maturity' and 'a rare survival from the series of Bathers', which can be dated to between 1656 and 1659, when the artist was working in Brussels after returning from Rome. She refers to 'Its moving atmosphere of submissive humility and suspended moment of focus'. As a religious subject it would be unique in Sweerts's oeuvre but the face of Christ is comparable to a number of Sweerts's portraits and the landscape, lit by an early morning light, is reminiscent of two of Sweerts's known compositions: his Bathing Scene of circa 1655 (on canvas, 110 x 164 cm, in the Musées des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg) and his Young Men Bathing (on canvas, 63.3 x 87 cm, in the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hannover).

Lindsay Shaw-Miller suggests that this work may be connected with Sweerts leaving Brussels to join the Société des Missions Etrangères as an artist and lay brother, which must have been a dramatic change in his life. It was a commitment to a new calling as poignantly significant as Christ's baptism was and it could be that this portrayal of a moment of dramatic but also humbling change and acceptance had biographical significance for the artist at this crucial point in his life. She thus describes it as 'a very personal interpretation from a pivotal scene in Christ's Life by this deeply religious artist'.