Oil painting on panel from the 17th century depicting a Bacchanal attributed to Gerard I Hoet (1648 – 1733). Within a gilded and carved wooden frame. The painting, oil on panel in very good overall condition, depicts a bacchanal scene with a dance of satyrs, putti and girls in scantily clad clothing. Sitting at the bottom right is an old Bacchus, with a large shell at his side, following the scene with his right arm raised. Everything is placed within a pleasant landscape with two tall trees full of foliage dominating the central part of the panel and ideally dividing the right side of the work, a simple rocky background, from the left side, richer and brighter with a clear landscape of green valleys and mountains in the background. The work can rightly be attributed to the Flemish painter Gerard I Hoet (not to be confused with his son, Gerard II), son of Moses Hoet, a stained glass decorator, who was also his first teacher. Initially he assisted his father in his profession, then became his pupil, of Warnard van Rysen. In 1672, due to the capture of Zaltbommel by the French, he moved to The Hague where he worked on the decoration of halls and ceilings in some of the city's main hotels and subsequently moved to Amsterdam and Paris. After a year, he returned to North Holland and settled in Utrecht, invited there by M. van Zuylen, one of the leading patrons of the period, for whom he executed some of his best works. In this city, in 1697, he founded together with Hendrick Schoock a drawing academy, of which he was director. Hoet followed large-scale paintings, often with many figures, in a classical and elegant style but mainly produced works of religious, mythological or classical subjects, generally of small format, with landscapes in the style of Cornelis van Poelenburch as a backdrop. It is precisely in the vein of this last typology of works that the painting presented here fits perfectly, a pleasant work in terms of subject, quality and size and worthy of a primary collection.
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SILVER Seller in Venezia, Italy
