Karel Philips Spierincks

(Brussels circa 1600-1639 Rome)

The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and angels

Footnotes

Provenance
In the present owners' family since 19th century

Little is known of the life of the Brussels-trained painter, Karel Philips Spierincks (also known as Carlo Filippo after he settled in Rome) but there are a few notices that allow us to put together a scant biography. He became a master of the guild in Brussels in 1622 and just two years 'Carlo Filippo Spirinch' is recorded as living in Rome with two other Flemish painters. By 1634 he paid dues to the Academy of Saint Luke and he was living with François Dusquenoy, with whom Poussin had also lived for a time.

In 1960 Anthony Blunt first grouped together works attributed to Spierincks, based around the Venus sleeping, with satyrs and cupids in the Royal Collection (RCIN 405568), which can be identified as the work described as 'venus with satires Cupids and landskip of Carlo Fellippo' when it was acquired by Charles II. In his article he describes Spierincks as 'the first imitator of Poussin's Bacchanals' to reflect his most typical subject matter of choice. The present work, however, is one of only a handful of paintings of a religious nature by the artist with one other given to him by Silvia Danesi Squarzina which shows Hagar and the Angel and now in the Neues Palais, Potsdam (see S. Danesi Squarzina, 'A 'Hagar and the angel' by Carel Philips Spierinck in Potsdam', Burlington Magazine, June 99, pp.349-351). With the profusion of putti climbing the tree in the background, the artist has, in the present painting, referenced the type of subject matter with which he was far more familiar.

We are grateful to Dr. Erich Schleier for independently confirming the attribution to Spierincks on the basis of a colour photograph.