A 17th century family reunited for paintings after 200 years apart

After an investigation by a Danish museum, the missing lady in a painting by Cornelis de Vos has been reunited with her husband and son.

By Le Figaro with AFP

published On 03/19/2023 at 07:00

Now only a few centimeters separate them: divided over two centuries after the cut, a family appears on a seventeenth-century canvas^H Century was collected by a Danish museum. The missing mother was found after a thorough investigation.

all in Portrait of a father and his son by the Flemish painter Cornelius de Vos (1584-1651), exhibited for over a century in the Nivaagaard collections in northern Copenhagen, indicates the disappearance of a female presence from the painting. On his right side, an unknown figure indicates that a piece of “puzzle” It was missing.

“It is a gown and a knee under it as well as a chair partsays museum director Andrea Rigg-Karberg. After careful investigation, the researchers found the missing woman, dressed in rich black clothes, her neck girded with strawberries like her husband’s. He was portrait of a ladyanother work by Cornelis de Vos, also dated 1626.

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“What could you have done?”

This work by a close friend of Pierre Paul Rubens was purchased at auction in 2014 by Dutch gallery owner Salomon Lillian, who undertook restoration work that highlighted the rustic backdrop. Danish researcher Jürgen Wadum found in an article a photo of this work after cleaning and suddenly realized that it was the missing mother.

“Finding the missing woman from a family photo is an unusual, once-in-a-lifetime eventAndrea Rigg-Karberg rejoices. “As in the puzzle, it fits in perfectly with our work on the poplars and sky in the backgroundThe art historian enthused.

Thanks to a grant from the New Carlsberg Foundation, his museum acquired the missing piece, which it now displays with his family. “It gives a good idea of ​​what it looked like at first (…) I wonder why it was cut out of the big board. What can you do?The 80-year-old visitor, Ole Joule, laughs.

For the group manager, the explanation is definitely very simple. The artwork has undoubtedly been cut off due to damage to the painting. “In my opinion, the bottom corner of the panel has been damaged. It was then divided into two acts, which operated separatelyThe researchers’ work made it possible to determine that the painting was completed until 1830. The first mention of the painting is only Portrait of a father and his son It takes place in the year 1859, which indicates that it was cut in this period.