Gallery of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels (Rothschild)

For similar paintings, see Gallery of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels.
Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery in Brussels
The Art Collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels
ArtistDavid Teniers the Younger Edit this on Wikidata
Year1653
Dimensions70.9 cm (27.9 in) × 87.6 cm (34.5 in)
Locationprivate collection
IdentifiersRKDimages ID: 44344
[edit on Wikidata]

Archduke Leopold Wilhelm and the artist in the archducal picture gallery in Brussels is a 1653 painting of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm's Italian art collection by the Flemish Baroque painter David Teniers the Younger. It is now held in a private collection, but it was previously owned by the Rothschild family, from whom it was taken in World War II and placed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum where it stayed for 50 years until restitution in 1999.[1][2]

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 the walls of an L-shaped room, with the men standing in front of a doorway with the words "TIMORE DOMINI" below a sculpted portrait of the archduke. Another set of paintings is positioned in the foreground leaning against chairs for inspection.

This painting is dated 1653 and was painted after earlier, larger versions that David Teniers the Younger prepared to document the Archduke's collection before he employed 12 engravers to publish his Theatrum Pictorium, 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.[3] The most impressive of these gallery paintings was the large version on copper in the Museo del Prado with a different selection of paintings. That was produced as a gift from the archduke to Philip IV of Spain.

  1. ^ Erzherzog Leopold Wilhelm in seiner Galerie Brüssel
  2. ^ Record 1480069 on Christie's website, for lot 224 of the London, 8 July 1999 sale "The Collection of Barons Nathaniel and Albert von Rothschild"
  3. ^ Online version of the Theatrum Pictorium, 1673