Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery

This interior view shows Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, touring his painting gallery in Brussels with friends. Teniers himself stands at a table, examining engravings, while the pictures hang in rows on the back walls and more are visible through a central doorway. In the foreground, several panels leaning against chairs seem set aside for closer inspection. According to the sources, the work belonged to a set Teniers produced to record the collection before the Archduke moved to Austria, and before the Theatrum Pictorium, an engraved catalogue often regarded as one of the first illustrated art catalogues, was published. The Archduke probably commissioned it as a gift for Philip IV of Spain, perhaps to show off the splendour of his Brussels gallery after recent Italian acquisitions. Among the recognisable paintings are works by Titian, Raphael and other Italian masters. The scene is valuable both as a record of the collection and as a portrait of seventeenth-century connoisseurship.

Painter

David Teniers the Younger

Date

1649

Medium

copper, oil paint

Dimensions

105 × 130 cm

Museum

Museo del Prado, Madrid

Genre

interior view

Depicts

table, San Cassiano Altarpiece, Shepherds and Sheep, Nymph and Shepherd, Raising the Young Man of Nain, Toilet of Venus, Woman with a Mirror, Portrait of Francesco Donato

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