Cornelis van der Geest
Encyclopedia
Spice
A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, or vegetative substance used in nutritionally insignificant quantities as a food additive for flavor, color, or as a preservative that kills harmful bacteria or prevents their growth. It may be used to flavour a dish or to hide other flavours...
merchant from Antwerp, who used his wealth to support the Antwerp artists and to establish his art collection. He was also the dean of the haberdasher
Haberdasher
A haberdasher is a person who sells small articles for sewing, such as buttons, ribbons, zips, and other notions. In American English, haberdasher is another term for a men's outfitter. A haberdasher's shop or the items sold therein are called haberdashery.-Origin and use:The word appears in...
s guild
Guild
A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society...
. He has been portraited repeatedly by Anthony Van Dyck
Anthony van Dyck
Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of Charles I of England and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next...
, while Willem van Haecht
Willem van Haecht
Willem van Haecht was a Flemish Baroque painter best known for his gallery pictures and the son of the landscape painter Tobias Verhaecht. He studied under Peter Paul Rubens, worked in Paris from 1615 to 1619, and then travelled to Italy for about seven years. Van Haecht became a master in...
painted his "constcammer", a view of the visit of Albert VII, Archduke of Austria
Albert VII, Archduke of Austria
Archduke Albert VII of Austria was, jointly with his wife, the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, sovereign of the Habsburg Netherlands between 1598 and 1621, ruling the Habsburg territories in the southern Low Countries and the north of modern France...
and Isabella Clara Eugenia to his art collection. He owned two paintings by Quentin Matsys
Quentin Matsys
Quentin Matsys was a painter in the Flemish tradition and a founder of the Antwerp school. He was born at Leuven, where legend states he was trained as an ironsmith before becoming a painter...
, one of which, a Madonna, can be seen in the van haecht painting. Other works included in that view are Women at her toilet by Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....
, a still life by Frans Snyders, Ceres Mocked by Adam Elsheimer
Adam Elsheimer
Adam Elsheimer was a German artist working in Rome who died at only thirty-two, but was very influential in the early 17th century. His relatively few paintings were small scale, nearly all painted on copper plates, of the type often known as cabinet paintings. They include a variety of light...
, Danaë
Danaë
In Greek mythology, Danaë was a daughter of King Acrisius of Argos and Eurydice of Argos. She was the mother of Perseus by Zeus. She was sometimes credited with founding the city of Ardea in Latium....
by Van Haecht, Battle of the Amazons and a portrait by Peter Paul Rubens, Peasant Company with Woman making Pancakes by Pieter Aertsen
Pieter Aertsen
Pieter Aertsen , called Lange Pier because of his height, was a Dutch historical painter. He was born and died in Amsterdam, and painted there and in Antwerp, though his genre scenes were influential in Italy.-Biography:...
, Apelles by Jan Wierix
Wierix family
The Wierix family were a Flemish dynasty of printmakers in engraving in the 16th and early 17th centuries, active in Antwerp and Brussels....
and a hunting scene by Jan Wildens
Jan Wildens
Jan Wildens was a Flemish Baroque painter and draughtsman specializing in landscapes.-Biography:Jan Wildens was born in Antwerp in 1586 and at the age of ten was apprenticed to Pieter Verhulst and entered Antwerp's guild of St. Luke in 1604 as a master...
. The painting also shows some of Van der Geest's sculptures, with copies of the Venus de' Medici
Venus de' Medici
The Venus de' Medici or Medici Venus is a lifesize Hellenistic marble sculpture depicting the Greek goddess of love Aphrodite. It is a 1st century BC marble copy, perhaps made in Athens, of a bronze original Greek sculpture, following the type of the Aphrodite of Cnidos, which would have been made...
, the Farnese Hercules
Farnese Hercules
The Farnese Hercules is an ancient sculpture, probably an enlarged copy made in the early third century AD and signed by a certain Glykon, from an original by Lysippos that would have been made in the fourth century BC...
, and the Apollo Belvedere
Apollo Belvedere
The Apollo Belvedere or Apollo of the Belvedere—also called the Pythian Apollo— is a celebrated marble sculpture from Classical Antiquity. It was rediscovered in central Italy in the late 15th century, during the Renaissance...
. Van Haecht, who was the curator of the collection, painted two other views of the collection as well.
Van der Geest also functioned as a maecenas. He arranged for Rubens to get the order for a triptych for the Saint Walpurga
Saint Walpurga
Saint Walpurga or Walburga , also spelled Valderburg or Guibor, was an English missionary to the Frankish Empire. She was canonized on 1 May ca. 870 by Pope Adrian II...
church in Antwerp, which resulted in the Elevation of the Cross
The Elevation of the Cross (Rubens)
The Elevation of the Cross is a triptych painting by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, completed in 1610-1611....
, now in the Cathedral of Antwerp. Similarly, the order for the 1630-1632 Triptych of Saint Ildephonsus, intended for the Saint James church, but now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum
Kunsthistorisches Museum
The Kunsthistorisches Museum is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on Ringstraße, it is crowned with an octagonal dome...
in Vienna, was given to Rubens through the influence of Van der Geest.