Alegorie léta. Neznámé dílo z dílny Frederika van Valckenborcha ze sbírek Národního muzea v Praze

This text deals with an unknown oil painting from the collections of the National Museum (Department of Older Czech History) representing the Allegory of Summer. It presents it as an early work by Frederik van Valckenborch (1566–1623) and his workshop, including Georg Flegel (1566–1638). The aim of the study is to examine Valckeborch’s painting Allegory of Summer in terms of formal, iconographic, stylistic and contextual analyses. The formal analysis begins with a consideration of the painting’s composition, colour, handling of the figure and depiction of volumes. It continues with an iconographic analysis that interprets the allegory as a representation of market scenes, which, in a secondary sense, symbolise the seasons and were popular in cosmopolitan, affluent Frankfurt am Main. Subsequently, the stylistic analysis suggests that a member of the van Valckenborch family painted it, with Frederik van Valckenborch as the most probable author. In the search for analogies with the painting, attention is turned to works such as Flower Market, Fruit Market and Poultry Market from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Frederik’s signed Night Carnival from Maarten Wurfbain’s collection in Oegstgeest, a sketchbook from the Albertina that Frederik brought back from his travels in Italy, and Gillis van Coninxloo’s Landscape with the Sacrifice of Isaac. These comparisons suggest the typified physiognomies of the women’s faces, identical clothing and jewellery, the analogous dancing pose of the aristocratic women , the echoes of the pen drawings of fruit pickers, reapers and peasants, architecture evoking Frederik’s experiences in Venice and Mantua, and, above all, a background landscape and cloudy sky that show a stylistic affinity with the work of Gillis van Coninxloo. Georg Flegel, who continued to work in the Valckenborch workshop after the death of Lucas van Valckenborch in 1597, is confirmed as the author of the fruit and vegetable still life. Given the life dates of both artists, the oil painting can be dated to before 1602. Contextual analysis shows that the painting was at Lichtenstein Castle in Koloděje near Prague by 1906 at the latest. Its continued presence in the castle is confirmed by the inventory taken between 1916 and 1921. Since 1956, it has been in the collections of the Department of Older Czech History of the National Museum.