Sebastiaen Vrancx, Flemish 1573-1647- Soldiers raiding a village; oil on cradled panel, signed with monogram, 48.3x65.5cm Provenance: Lempertz, Koln, 19th November 2005, lot 1175, where purchased by the present owners Note: considered to be the pioneering artist of the battle scene in Northern European art, Vrancx's crowded and detailed compositions display an advanced understanding of the illusion of perspective for this period. The present work typically showcases his style, with a dramatic view of soldiers on foot and horseback attacking villagers. Vrancx began his career as a painter of Mannerist biblical scenes in Italy, reminiscent of Paul Bril and Jan Brueghel the Elder, before returning to Flanders. It is thought more than half of his known paintings are of military scenes. Vrancx became an officer in the Antwerp Civic Guard in 1613 and was promoted to captain 1621, his first-hand military experience no doubt leading to his fascination in depicting the battles and skirmishes of the Dutch wars. He would also have clearly recalled the wartime devastation and horrors during his childhood in Antwerp. Vrancx played a pivotal role in transforming the large-scale battle scenes of the sixteenth century into more dynamic and intimate cavalry scenes and skirmishes. Tired traditions of chivalry and heroics are removed in favour of the harsh realities of the warfare; the disrupted lives of his countrymen during the Eighty Years War are recorded with a greater naturalism. This new format exercised became the popular standard type for the genre and was applied by contemporaries and followers for generations to come. Whether Vrancx led a large studio workshop is still up for debate. A frequently cited letter of 1634, written by Jan Brueghel the Younger to his business partner in Seville, reports that: ‘Vrancx has plenty to do but refuses to employ studio assistants, which means that work takes a long time. He does not allow copies to be put into circulation’. Sir Peter Paul Ruben’s collected a number of his paintings, which may have informed his own artistic development. The Uffizi hold two sheets of studies attributed to Rubens after Vrancx, a sure sign of the later artist’s admiration for the work of his forebear. Vrancx depicts the clothing of his figures with a marked degree of detail, an interest also demonstrated in his designs for a sequence of prints by Pieter de Jode, exhibiting the dresses of various countries (Variarum Gentium Ornatus). Vrancx wrote both tragedies and comedies for the Antwerp rhetoricians chamber (‘de Violeren’), his time there perhaps affecting the narrative structure of his painting and the way he chose to tell stories through his art. Please refer to department for condition report