Willem van Haecht - Apelles painting Campaspe

This is what a 17th-century art collection would have looked like: a high room filled to overflowing with paintings, antique sculpture, drawings, prints and porcelain. Nevertheless, this is an imaginary gallery: even though many of these paintings do in fact exist, they have never been part of the same collection. The Flemish painter Willem van Haecht combined this imaginary 17th-century collector’s cabinet with a story from classical antiquity. The man sitting at the easel in the foreground is Apelles, court painter to Alexander the Great (wearing a cuirass). Apelles is painting the portrait of Campaspe, Alexander’s most beautiful lover. Tradition has it that Apelles fell in love with her while painting her portrait. When it was finished, Alexander gave him Campaspe as a present. He himself was content with just the portrait, since it was even more beautiful than the woman. This story was a popular subject among painters, for it shows that their art could surpass nature and was therefore deserving of rich rewards. Van Haecht situated the story in the midst of the most beautiful paintings he knew, including a great number of Flemish works – thereby creating a veritable ode to the art of painting.		artist Willem van Haecht title Apelles painting Campaspe period c.1630 material paneel dimensions 104.9 x 148.7 cm
Van Haecht’s imaginary museum Paintings, statues, prints, drawings, costly porcelain – enough to make many a collector green with envy. Van Haecht’s imaginary gallery contains many paintings that he saw every day in his role as keeper of the famous art collection of his fellow townsman Cornelis van der Geest. Hanging above the table, for example, is the Battle of the Amazons, which Rubens painted for Van der Geest around 1615. Interestingly, there are also works by the Italian artists Caravaggio and Titian that were not actually in Antwerp. It is possible that Van Haecht had seen these paintings during his sojourn in France and Italy. Many of the works displayed still exist, and are to be found in museums all over the world.
Van Haecht and Rubens This painting exudes great admiration for Rubens, who in Van Haecht’s day was Antwerp’s foremost artist. Van Haecht, who was a distant relative of Rubens, refers to the great master in all kinds of ways. Contemporary connoisseurs would certainly have understood these allusions. - The interior is very similar to that of Rubens’s house in Antwerp, which is now a museum. The semicircular niche in the back room recalls the mouseion (museum) where Rubens displayed his collection of sculpture. - The figure of Alexander the Great derives from Rubens’s painting Perseus freeing Andromeda. - Hanging just behind the easel is Rubens’s Battle of the Amazons. Perhaps it was Van Haecht’s intention to compare his fellow townsman to the famous painter of antiquity. It has even been suggested that Van Haecht based the figure of Apelles on self-portraits by Rubens.
A Kunstkammer, or collector’s cabinet Van Haecht shows a collector’s cabinet, the forerunner of the museum. In his day wealthy Europeans collected art and curiosities, such as exotic shells and porcelain. They displayed their costly collections in a Kunstkammer, or collector’s cabinet, which could be seen by appointment only. The most famous Kunstkammer in Antwerp was that of Cornelis van der Geest; Van Haecht was the keeper of his collection. The painting gives a good idea of the furnishings of such cabinets, whose walls were covered from floor to ceiling with paintings. The intended effect was to overawe the viewer. It was not important how old a painting was, what subject it depicted, or which artistic trend it represented. Only in the 19th century did museums start to group paintings by period or artistic movement.
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