Three conversing figures, detail from Windsor drawing

Gorman: I suppose a fundamental question remains: what is the relationship between this drawing and this painting? Because the drawing, I think, clearly is before the painting. You know, these are sketches and so on, and it’s clearly very closely related to the picture — it doesn’t seem to be a completely independent work. But the drawing, as you can see, is more conventional — it has the same octagonal table, it has the globe, but it has the more conventional picture of three connoisseurs conversing around a table, it has a dog — it is more in the traditional genre of gallery interiors.

Cordover: And I would argue that two of those cognoscenti are easily identifiable.

Marr: Yes.

Cordover: I think that the figure on the right is almost identical to a self portrait by Peter Paul Rubens.

Marr: Yes, I would say that.

Cordover: And the figure on the left I think is also identifiable . . . .

Gorman: As Peter Linder?

Marr: Yes I think it is Peter Linder.

Cordover: Do you think so?

Gorman: Yes. And I also have a guess about who the figure in the middle is.

Cordover: That’s extraordinary.

Gorman: I saw it this afternoon. I think it’s Van Dyck, who was working in the Rubens studio from 1618 to 1620.

Cordover: Now that you’ve said it, it conjures up that portrait of Van Dyck that does look just like this.

Gorman: But if it is van Dyck, think about the drawing, — I think the drawing is memorializing a visit.  Perhaps Linder went to Antwerp for business between 1618 and 1620, and this was a visit where he met Rubens and van Dyck, and this is where the idea of him commissioning a gallery painting originated, and then this drawing was developed, possibly brought by Jan Brueghel the Younger to Milan. Then Linder and Oddi developed a more complex version of the composition and brought in the allegory, the deep mathematical content and the Kepler connection and so on and then that led to the painting. It’s just an idea.

Cordover: Van Dyck went to Milan with Jan Brueghel the Younger, his close friend, in 1622.

Weschler: The painting is painted in Antwerp or in Milan?

Gorman: The painting could have been painted in theory in either, but it was definitely painted by an Antwerp painter and they didn’t tend to stick around in Milan for long enough to do much, so it seems more likely that it was painted in Antwerp but commissioned perhaps on the basis of a visit to Milan.

Weschler: How could they have worked from Milan? There are the Alps in between…

Giovanni Battista Caravaggio, letter to Muzio Oddi, 28 March 1629

Here is an excerpt from the translation Alex and I made of the letter:

Three days ago, spurred on in part by my duty and in part by curiosity, I went to visit Signor Pietro Linder [...]. He offered to show me various beautiful objects in his study, where, as well as the little ivory statues and others of less noble material, and the casket arranged beautifully with various mathematical instruments, I saw in particular, among many other paintings which had appeared since I was there last, a painting of decent size in which a gallery is shown in perspective, adorned with various paintings, depicted with no less study than skill, both in the extreme diligence used in them, and in that one can see there the styles of different individual painters imitated.

Three tables are then depicted in a well-proportioned position, on which are various beautifully feigned mathematical instruments, concave mirrors, crystal lenses, pieces of prints, demonstrations and mathematical figures, and finally various medals, among which I saw the one with the image of your Lordship represented there with better fortune than the good Signor Pietro had with the cast, as in addition to displaying an extremely good likeness of your Lordship, there are also the letters that spell your name, carried out with such precision that, however small they may be, they can be read without difficulty. In sum it appeared to be that this painting, both for the inventione, which I understood to be in a large part due to your Lordship, and for the work, was worthy of the cabinet of any great prince.

There are a few interesting points to raise about this letter:

First, can we be sure he is really talking about the same painting? Although he describes the three tables and the astronomical instruments in detail, it seems strange that Caravaggio (not to be confused with the famous painter) makes no mention of the two figures — the bearded old man and the woman — dominating the foreground. Could it be that the allegorical figures were added later? Technical analysis makes that seem very unlikely. Given that Caravaggio cites Linder as the owner of the painting, and the Linder coat of arms appear in the upper left-hand window of the painting it seems pretty certain that he is describing this painting.

Second, Caravaggio suggests that his tutor the Urbino mathematician Muzio Oddi had a very important role in the “invention” of the painting. He also mentions that Oddi’s portrait medal is included in the painting. Close inspection of the Linder Gallery painting reveals Oddi’s portait on the octagonal table, the darkest and most illegible of all the medals (see the zoomable detail of the Green Table in particular). Oddi would appear to be a key figure in coming up with the strong mathematical emphasis of the painting (though curiously Oddi is not known to have had any particular interest in Kepler — strange given the strong references to Kepler in the painting).

Third, Caravaggio’s letter helps us date the completion of the painting. There are two objects represented in the painting that date from 1627 (Kepler’s Rudolphine Tables and the Muzio Oddi portrait medal) so it seems likely that the painting was completed between 1627 and 1629, while it may have been commenced well before then. It is of course possible that the painting was completed by a different artist to the artist who commenced it (gallery interiors were frequently collaborative works).

It is somewhat frustrating that Caravaggio doesn’t bother to mention the name of the artist in his lengthy description of the Linder Gallery. His letter does demonstrate clearly that the artist wasn’t working in isolation but in close consultation with at least two other people — merchant and collector Peter Linder and mathematician Muzio Oddi.

Windsor Drawing (RL 12983)

Perhaps the most intriguing difference between the drawing and the painting is that the drawing shows a more conventional grouping of three connoisseurs in conversation instead of the allegorical figures shown in the painting. Could this be the preparatory drawing on which the painting was based?

There are several reasons to think so. For one thing, several of the paintings shown on the walls in the drawing appear to be rough compositional sketches for the paintings shown in the painting. For example if you look at the sketch of the Nymphs and Satyrs in the upper left of the drawing you see a nymph in the centre reaching  up with her right arm, and a satyr reaching down, whereas in the finished painting there is a nymph in the left foreground reaching up with her left arm. Similarly in the sketch for Belshazaar’s Feast, one sees King Belshazzar seated on the left, with servants bringing exotic foods including a peacock pie. In the finished painting the peacock pie is already on the table.

Comparison of Belshazzar's Feast in drawing and painting

This suggests that the sketches in the drawings are quick compositional sketches for the final paintings. It also suggests that the paintings on the walls of the Linder Gallery are not copies of real works but original compositions in the style of well known Flemish, Dutch and Italian artists of the time (if you were copying an existing painting, surely you wouldn’t change the composition?).

So it appears that the Windsor drawing is prior to the Linder Gallery, and also that the paintings on the walls in both are imaginary works. The perspective scheme of the Windsor drawing is also identical to that of the Linder Gallery, and technical analysis of the painting has shown a perspective underdrawing which shows this even more strongly.

Detail of Windsor Drawing

Another interesting feature of the Windsor drawings is the three conversing figures. The book A Mysterious Masterpiece contains a suggestion as to their possible identity. The figure on the right is identified as Antwerp’s most famous painter, Peter Paul Rubens. The figure on the left is identified as Peter Linder, the German merchant who was the patron of the Linder Gallery, and it is suggested that the central figure is Anthony van Dyck, who worked in Rubens’ studio. It is possible that the Windsor drawing was created to memorialize a visit Linder made to Antwerp, during which he met Rubens, van Dyck and the painter (still unknown) of the Linder Gallery.

Detail from Linder Gallery showing double portrait of Peter Linder (left) and unidentified artist

Another double-portrait exists which is strikingly similar to this one, carried out by the Milanese painter Daniele Crespi, showing a lesson about burning mirrors. An interesting thing to notice is that the mirror and the beam compass present in the Crespi painting are also in the Linder Gallery, and the balding, bearded man in both paintings can be identified as German merchant Peter Linder, whose coat-of-arms is on the window in the upper-left of the Linder Gallery. The other man in the Crespi painting can be identified as Urbino mathematician Muzio Oddi, who taught Linder mathematics and was also a key figure in devising the intellectual programme of the Linder Gallery painting.

But who is the artist? Various hypotheses have been put forward for who the artist might be. Jan Brueghel the Elder might be an obvious candidate on stylistic grounds, and did many paintings on commission for Cardinal Federico Borromeo in Milan.

However, there are a couple of issues with the theory that Jan Brueghel the Elder was the lead artist:

1)    the painting is highly likely to have been completed after 1627 (the date of publication of Kepler’s Rudolphine Tables, present in the painting on the green octagonal table, and one of the medals present on the octagonal table was only made in 1627). Jan Brueghel the Elder died in 1625.

2)    Jan Brueghel the Elder didn’t look anything like the artist in the double-portrait (he was older and had a gaunt face).

Jan Brueghel the Younger, son of Jan the Elder, was in Milan, where the painting was almost certainly commissioned, in the 1620s and was of a similar age to the artist represented in the double-portrait. However we haven’t yet found a portrait of him to compare this with. Stylistically, he was not as accomplished as his father and it seems unlikely that he could have carried off such a painting in his youth. There are a few other Flemish artists who painted works of this kind, and works like this were often collaborative efforts, but it really is surprisingly hard to pin down the artist of the Linder Gallery.