BOECKHORST, Jan van

The extraordinary decorative qualities of Boeckhorst’s late work are perhaps most apparent in the pictures of Old Testament or allegorical and mythological subjects executed in landscape format. The present work is an example of the paintings with mythological subjects.

The extraordinary decorative qualities of Boeckhorst’s late work are perhaps most apparent in the pictures of Old Testament or allegorical and mythological subjects executed in landscape format. The present work is an example of the paintings with mythological subjects.

Van Dyck’s influence became decisive in the style of Boeckhorst both in the ecstatic looks of the character types and in the emotive construction of the composition. He painted a substantial number of monumental altarpieces and other devotional pictures in this style, such as the Adoration of the Magi.

This sketch in the style of Rubens was likely made in preparation for a print. The design is from the Boeckhorsts’s own imagination rather than derived from Rubens.

Python, in Greek mythology, is a huge serpent that was killed by the god Apollo at Delphi either because it would not let him found his oracle, being accustomed itself to giving oracles, or because it had persecuted Apollo’s mother, Leto, during her pregnancy.

This early painting by the artist illustrates the similarity of his style to that of Rubens. The work is directly inspired by Rubens’s own version of the subject made around 1635.

Formerly this painting was attributed to Rubens. Indeed, Boeckhorst’s style in his early period was particularly close to that of Rubens, and he certainly knew Rubens’s own treatments of this subject, in particular his painting now in Antwerp.

Van Dyck’s influence became decisive in the style of Boeckhorst both in the ecstatic looks of the character types and in the emotive construction of the composition. He painted a substantial number of monumental altarpieces and other devotional pictures in this style, such as the David’s Vision.

This painting with life-size figures, one of the painter’s earliest known works, clearly demonstrates Rubens’s influence on Boeckhorst. With the emphatic plasticity of the figures in the foreground, this work seems to take advantage of the taste for genre compositions executed on a monumental scale. The painting in fact can be interpreted as an allegory of the Four Elements.