''Archduke Leopold Wilhelm and the artist in the archducal picture gallery in Brussels'' is a 1651 painting of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm's Italian art collection by the Flemish Baroque painter

David Teniers the Younger David Teniers the Younger or David Teniers II (bapt. 15 December 1610 – 25 April 1690) was a Flemish Baroque painter, printmaker, draughtsman, miniaturist painter, staffage painter, copyist and art curator. He was an extremely versatile arti ...

, now held in the

Kunsthistorisches Museum The Kunsthistorisches Museum ( "Museum of Art History", often referred to as the "Museum of Fine Arts") is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on the Vienna Ring Road, it is crowned with an octagonal do ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Description

The painting shows the Archduke as a collector with friends admiring a set of paintings. The artist himself holds his hat in his hand and is listening to his patron as the archduke gestures with his cane towards some recent acquisitions. The paintings are arranged in rows on a rear wall, with several others on the side of the vestibule on the left, and a set that are positioned in the foreground leaning against chairs for inspection.

History

This painting is a copy by the artist and one of the first that

prepared to document the Archduke's collection before he employed 12 engravers to publish his ''

Theatrum Pictorium ''Theatrum Pictorium'', or ''Theatre of Painting'', is a short-hand name of a book published in the 1660s by David Teniers the Younger for his employer, the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria. It was a catalog of 243 Italian paintings in the Ar ...

'', considered the "first illustrated art catalog". He published this book of engravings after the Archduke had moved to Austria and taken his collection with him. It was published in Antwerp in 1659 and again in 1673. The original version of this painting, with the figures arranged differently, is in the collection of

Petworth House Petworth House in the parish of Petworth, West Sussex, England, is a late 17th-century Grade I listed country house, rebuilt in 1688 by Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, and altered in the 1870s to the design of the architect Anthony Sa ...

, south of London.

Paintings depicted

Most of the recognizable paintings in the collection, not all of which were included in the Italian catalog prepared by Teniers, are still in the Viennese collection. The full list of the depicted paintings is the same as the Petworth version. That version, which includes a portrait of Bishop Antonius Triest (1576-1657), served as the basis for this copy, though they are about the same size and were possibly both made at the same time in tandem.record 44376
in the

RKD The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

The bishop was an art collector and a patron of many of Teniers's contemporary artists in Antwerp, and introduced Teniers to the Archduke. This copy remained in the archducal collection, while several others were documented as gifts. The most impressive of these was the large version on copper in the Museo del Prado with a different selection of paintings.

References

History of the Collection
on museum website
David Teniers and the Theatre of Painting
exhibition 19 October 2006 to 21 January 2007 on website of the

Courtauld Institute of Art The Courtauld Institute of Art (), commonly referred to as The Courtauld, is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art and conservation. It is among the most prestigious specialist coll ...

{{ACArt 1651 paintings Paintings in Vienna Paintings in the collection of the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria Paintings of art galleries Paintings by David Teniers the Younger Dogs in art