Lot 628 | Jacob Bouttats | Animals Moving into Noah's Ark

BOUTTATS, JACOB
Antwerp before 1660 - after 1700

Title: Animals Moving into Noah's Ark.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Mounting: Relined.
Measurement: 70 x 93cm.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.

Certificate:
Klaus Ertz, Lingen 02.05.2022.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

The calm before the storm. The wind is already tugging at the clouds, blowing over the high rock massifs, while in a vast valley the animals remain in peaceful coexistence, eyeing each other with interest. Above in the firmament, flocks of birds indicate the direction in which man and beast soon set off in pairs - straight towards the ark, which is only dimly visible in the distance. Noah and his family can be seen in the background on the left. The artist has rendered them as mere staffage figures. The big stage in this work belongs to the animal kingdom. Exotic creatures such as peacocks, camels, lions or leopards were completely alien to the viewers of the time. Since few artists were able to study the foreign fauna in the original - which explains, for example, the almost human-like faces of the big cats - it was a perfectly honourable practice to "copy" individual motifs based on the models of other artists. Jacob Bouttats created his Paradise Landscape after motifs by Jan Brueghel the Elder and, especially in the depiction of the animals, borrowed from works by Roelant Savery. Due to the enormous variety of creatures depicted, paintings like this one enjoyed great demand well into the 18th century.