Flemish painter, mainly of religious and genre scenes. In his native Antwerp he was a pupil of Janssens, an Italianate painter of merit, then from about 1616 to about 1625 he was in Italy. There his work became strongly Caravaggesque and he established himself as one of the leading Flemish exponents of the style. Later, he fell under the all-pervasive influence of Rubens and his work became much lighter in tonality.
Art-lovers in the 16th and 17th centuries were very fond of emblematic paintings, although the content of a work of art often served merely as a pretext for a display of painterly ingenuity. The Allegory of the Five Senses by Theodore Rombouts fits this pattern perfectly. Each man in this painting symbolizes one of the five senses. The old man with glasses and a mirror represents Sight. The chitarrone, a type of bass lute, stands for Sound. The blind man is symbolic of the sense of Touch. The jolly man with a glass of wine in his hand portrays Taste, and the elegant young man with a pipe and garlic, Smell. The garlic, wine, music and mirror refer to the fallacy of sensory perception and the transience of life.
The Ghent bishop, Antoon Triest, who also owned several paintings by Dutch masters, ordered this canvas from Rombouts.
The detail shows the allegory of hearing.
In this painting, and also in some of his other works, Rombouts has placed himself and his wife rather obviously among the bystanders, a custom which was not unusual in Dutch genre painting, particularly among the Caravaggists. The lavishly dressed soldier bears the artist’s likeness.
Card playing was perceived as a time-waster at best and, at worst, was associated with any number of disreputable behaviours. Though no alcohol is depicted, coins are strewn about the table: a reference to the ‘unwholesome’ activity of gambling.
This painting was transferred to Nazi Germany in 1944 and restituted by the Soviet Union in 1956.
This painting depicts a woman and three men seated around a table playing cards.
Theodor Rombouts was the primary exponent of Flemish Caravaggism, a brief but important artistic phenomenon that peaked in the 1620s. He is best known for his large-scale secular works depicting merry companies, music scenes and card-playing characters in compact compositions. His half-length figures, firmly modelled and always lively, wear theatrical costumes and are set in chiaroscuro lighting typical of the Flemish Caravaggisti, also known as the Antwerp Tenebrosi.
The present work, Card Players in an Interior, is one of the most representative works of Rombouts’s Caravaggesque genre scenes. Recalling Manfredi’s merry company pictures, there is a marked sense of monumentality to the five figures that are arranged around a carpeted table, engaged in a game of cards. The individuals are realistic and expressive; the scene appears convincingly spontaneous and natural. Rombouts introduces repoussoir figures that confront the viewer and direct attention to the central bearded figure who stares down at his hand of cards, presumably a self-portrait. Rombouts also included a portrait of his wife, Anna, in the hatted figure seated beside him. The inclusion of self-portraits and portraits of family members was not unusual in Dutch and Flemish genre painting, despite the potentially negative associations of moralising subjects.
Portraits of Rombouts, his wife and even his young daughter can be seen in another of his works, The Backgammon Players, at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, in which the lavishly dressed soldier bears the artist’s likeness.
Elements of this half-figure composition are borrowed from Caravaggio.
Theodor Rombouts was a pupil of Abraham Janssens, and another Caravaggist. He spent a number of years in Italy, and was much influenced by Caravaggio’s genre works. As far as the subject matter is concerned, his Card Players is a genre painting, depicting as it does a jolly scene from everyday life probably with a moralising undertone. The painting is large in format, realistic in conception and traditional in style, and its subject is portrayed in sober and monumental fashion.
The influence of Rubens, the best painter in all genres in the 17th-century Flanders, overlaid that of Caravaggio which had swept over north European painting since before 1600. Rombouts hesitated between Caravaggio and Rubens as can be detected in this picture.
From about 1625 in Antwerp, in the same expressive and realistic style as his Caravaggist conversation pieces, Rombouts painted several narrative pictures with religious subjects in a landscape format, mainly for the open market. The present painting is a good illustration of this. It depicts the scene when Peter first betrays Christ after he has been taken prisoner.
Theodor Rombouts was one of the most original of the Flemish followers of Caravaggio; this composition is based on Caravaggio’s Calling of Saint Matthew in San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome.
This monumental and powerfully modeled figure of a musician tuning a lute can be linked stylistically with Bartolomeo Manfredi’s work, strongly suggesting that it was executed towards the end of Rombouts short stay in Rome. The composition ultimately derives from Caravaggio’s two versions of The Lute Player, however, the theatrical clothing and the somewhat menacing demeanour of the figure’s expression are closer to the representations of male lute players by the Utrecht Caravaggesque painters like Dirck van Baburen and Hendrick Terbrugghen.
Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes):
Franz Schubert: An die Laute (To the Lute) D 905
