A Collector's Cabinet
by BISON, Giuseppe Bernardino, Oil on canvas, 55 x 66 cm
Although Bison is known for his Venetian vedute and depictions of Italy in general, he painted other subjects, too. The present interior scene belongs to a genre developed in the 1610s in Antwerp by Frans Francken II and Jan Brueghel the Elder. By the middle of the century, David Teniers took up the subject at the request of Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm von Habsburg who wanted to record his very rich collection of paintings.
The present painting by Bison is clearly inspired by a seventeenth-century Flemish paintings which he knew from engravings.