BALTENS, Peeter

(b. ~1527 Antwerpen, d. ~1584 Antwerpen)

South Netherlandish painter, draughtsman, engraver and publisher. He was the son of the sculptor Balten Jansz. de Costere (fl 1524). In 1550 he became a master in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp and in 1569 its dean. Primarily on the authority of van Mander, Baltens was long considered to be an inferior imitator of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Baltens’s best-known work, the signed St Martin’s Day Kermis (e.g. versions Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten), was formerly thought to be a free copy after Bruegel’s treatment of the subject, known through an engraving and the Gift of St Martin, a fragment on cloth (Vienna, Kunsthistorishes Museum). The relationship between Baltens and Bruegel is, however, more complicated. In 1551 they collaborated on an altarpiece (destroyed) for the Mechelen Glovemakers. Baltens’s other works, for example the Ecce homo (Antwerp, Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten), reveal that the two artists were closely associated: a group from the Ecce Homo reappears as an independent painting (private collection) by Bruegel’s son and imitator Pieter Brueghel the Younger.

Christ on the Road to Calvary

Traditionally the painting was ascribed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, however, now Baltens’ authorship is fully recognised. The composition was probably inspired, but only in the broadest of outlines, by Pieter Bruegel’s painting of this subject, dated 1564, now in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, which Baltens must have known in Antwerp.

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The Feast of St George with Theatre and Procession

In Flanders, village feasts took place to celebrate Saints Days to whom churches and the country’s town and village guilds were dedicated. These feasts were always accompanied by religious processions but also by theatrical shows, games and archery competitions.

Here, the village square, which lies at the heart of the feast, is seen from above. This procedure allowed Peeter Baltens to linger over a myriad of episodes. Grouped together in this way, they constitute a summary of the celebrations and allow more than a hundred characters to be presented in the same painting. The dominant red of the clothes, typical in Baltens’s works, adds to the rhythm of the whole, reinforcing the effect of joyous excitement that emanates from the paintings of the master.

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The Feast of St George with Theatre and Procession (detail)

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