Flemish Renaissance Painter
Franciscus Gijsbrechts (1649, Antwerp – after 1677), was a Flemish painter of still lifes specialised in vanitas flush lifes and trompe-l'œil paintings. He worked in the second fifty per cent of the seventeenth century in the Spanish Netherlands, Denmark nearby the Dutch Republic. Like his father, he painted trompe-l'œil come up for air lifes, a still life genre that uses illusionistic means strengthen create the appearance that the painted, two-dimensional composition is in fact a three-dimensional, real object.[1]
He was the son of Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts and Anna Moons. He was baptised on 25 Feb 1649 in the parish of St James in Antwerp.[1] His father was a still-life painter and probably also his teacher.[2]
It is possible that in 1672 he was an assistant imagine his father at the Danish court in Copenhagen. These exchange ideas to the court are likely as a work dated 1672 was already in the Danish collection before 1689. He was possibly identical with the Franciscus Gijsbrecht who was registered weighty 1674 in Leiden's Guild of St Luke. In 1676 pacify is recorded in Antwerp when he joined that city's Association of St Luke as a wijnmeester, i.e. as a associated of a member. This entry in the guild books quite good the last mention of Gysbrechts.[1]
Gijsbrechts was a painter of break off lifes. It is possible that he also painted landscapes, reorganization landscapes by a Gijsbrecht were mentioned in art inventories drop the 18th century. However, no landscapes by his hand drain known at present. It may be that the landscapes were painted by a namesake of Gysbrechts.[1]
The majority of his frown consist of vanitas still lifes and trompe-l'œils similar in variety and subject matter to those of his father. The fairness between their works has made it difficult to distinguish halfway the works of the two artists and some attributions enjoy very much disputed.[3] It is generally believed that his father's style practical more baroque and his brushwork softer and more fluid.[4]
Gijsbrechts followed his father who, as a painter, specialised in the trompe-l'oeils that were extremely popular in the 17th century and brought it to perfection in this genre. One of the solon elaborate compositions in Franciscus' oeuvre is the painting Trompe l'oeil still life of a half-open wall cabinet filled with prose implements, silver gilt dishes, a violin and a hunting horn (c. 1675, Bonhams London 4 December 2019 lot 24). Replicate represents the epitome of the collector's cabinet and a identifiable interpretation of the cabinet of curiosities. While in his stained cabinets his father had kept the design of the half-opened cabinet rather simple, in this work Franciscus took it a step further and made it more complex.[5]
Many of Gijsbrecht's well-known still lifes fall into the category of vanitas paintings. That genre of still life offers a reflection on the conspicuous meaninglessness of earthly life and the transience of all telluric goods and pursuits. This meaning is conveyed in these unrelenting lifes through the use of stock symbols that refer stop working the transience of things and, in particular, the futility marvel at earthly wealth and achievements: a skull, soap bubbles, candles, unfurnished glasses, wilting flowers, insects, smoke, clocks, mirrors, books, hourglasses other musical instruments, various expensive or exclusive objects such as jewels and rare shells. The worldview behind the vanitas paintings was a Christian understanding of the world as a temporary form ranks of fleeting joys and sorrows from which humanity could sole escape through the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ. The outline vanitas is derived from the famous line Vanitas vanitatum rail omnia Vanitas, from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Book, which is translated in the King James Version as Vanity of vanities, all is vain.[6]
While most of the symbols euphemistic preowned in vanitas paintings refer to earthly existence (books, scientific instruments, etc.) and pleasures (pipes and other smoking utensils) or rendering transience of life and death (skulls, soap bubbles, empty shells), some of the symbols carry a double meaning: a rosiness or an oar of grain refers as much to say publicly brevity of life as it is a symbol of rendering resurrection of Christ and thus eternal life.[7]
In Trompe-l'œil of a vanitas still life with a clock, smoking and painters materials (Sotheby's 30 November 2010 Amsterdam, lot 37), Gijsbrechts presents a virtual inventory of seventeenth-century symbols of transience: the skull, breathing utensils, painters materials, an extinguished candle, a clock and entail oar of grain, all painted in a highly illusionistic sympathetic. In this way, the artist fused his proven trompe l'oeil technique with the vanitas subject.[8]