Antwerp School; second third of the XVII century.

Antwerp School; second third of the XVII century.
"Kermesse".
Oil on copper.
It presents restorations and faults in the pictorial surface.
Measurements: 55 x 71 cm; 77 x 99 cm (frame).
Oil on copper in which the artist reflects a complex landscape where architecture coexists with nature. The skill of the author leads him to combine the most classical architecture, which is reflected in the palace on the right side of the scene, with a more fanciful and even ephemeral architecture, which is described in the foreground. The cypress trees and manicured gardens show us an exuberant conception of the scene, which is completed with the presence of several characters enjoying the outdoors, either strolling or dancing as in the case of the group of men and women who form a chorus in the foreground. This recreational idea may remind us of a "kermesse", a Dutch term for the popular peasant festivals typical of the Netherlands. It is a theme already popularized by David Teniers the Elder (1582-1649), who treated it with a healthy sense of humor that will enjoy a long life among genre painters in both Flanders and Holland. Although in this case it should be noted that this idea of "Kermesse" is wrapped in a halo of opulence related to the highest spheres of society and not to the peasantry.
Undoubtedly, it was in the painting of the Dutch school where the consequences of the political emancipation of the region, as well as the economic prosperity of the liberal bourgeoisie, were most openly manifested. The combination of the discovery of nature, objective observation, the study of the concrete, the appreciation of the everyday, the taste for the real and material, the sensitivity to the seemingly insignificant, made the Dutch artist commune with the reality of everyday life, without seeking any ideal alien to that same reality. The painter did not seek to transcend the present and the materiality of objective nature or to escape from tangible reality, but to envelop himself in it, to become intoxicated by it through the triumph of realism, a realism of pure illusory fiction, achieved thanks to a perfect and masterful technique and a conceptual subtlety in the lyrical treatment of light.