Lot 932 | Allegory of Sin and Redemption

FRANCK, PAUWELS
('Paolo Fiammingo')
ca. 1540 Antwerp - 1596 Venice

Title: Allegory of Sin and Redemption.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Mounting: Relined.
Measurement: 55,5 x 140cm.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Literature:
S. Mason Rinaldi: Paolo Fiammingo. In Saggi e memorie di storia dell'arte, 11, 1978, p. 59, cat. 6, ill. 71 (as "The Parable of the Rich Man and Poor Lazarus").

Provenance:
Private ownership, Italy.

The painting shown here by the Flemish Pauwels Franck or, as he is mentioned in the Venetian painters' guild in 1594, Paolo Fiammingo, who died in Venice, appears very unusual, gloomy and threatening. It is not only the unusual life story of the painter who, trained in his native Antwerp, was influenced by his teacher Tintoretto in Italy and from there worked for Emperor Rudolph II or the Fugger family that is exciting. The format also indicates that the canvas was not made as an "ordinary" painting, but rather in the context of a room programme or a piece of furniture, e.g. above the back of a sofa.
What is very special, however, is this very rare depiction, which with its many different elements, mostly dark and threatening, raises more questions than it answers. One possible reasonable interpretation is that the viewer is shown an allegorical representation of redemption from sin. On the right edge of the painting, which is dominated by a deep forest landscape, Eve sits on the shore, naked and looking at the forbidden fruit, while to the left the stormy sky casts lightning on Sodom, which has fallen prey to sin; people and animals flee from the burning ruins. The central focus of the painting is a naked female figure grasping her breasts - a quotation from depictions of the Temptation of St Anthony. She is looking at the main figure of the painting, a stretched-out sinner who is being handed poison in the form of a serpent's drink by two figures; the food spread out on the table, which also has devilish serpents running through it, is to be interpreted as a reference to gluttony.
Both the devil in the form of a snake, which is already harassing the reclining man, as well as the fire, already blazing under his daybed, and the view into the mouth of hell are clear indications of what awaits him - if he does not turn to the Trinity, who appears to him above in the illuminated sky and promises salvation.