Artist: Adam Willaerts
Date: 1630
Size: 38 x 56 cm
Technique: Oil On Panel
In the foreground a Spanish gentleman and a Dutch sailor are fighting over a gold stick as several people look on. This is an illustration of the power struggle between Spain and the Dutch Republic for control over the maritime trade routes to the Indies. The spectators include Englishmen and Venetians, who were greatly concerned about the outcome. The Battle of Gibraltar at which the Dutch defeated the Spanish fleet,4 is being fought in the background. This victory put the Republic in a better position to conduct trade with Italy and the Levant through the Straits of Gibraltar. A pamphlet of 1608 details the allegory of the struggle for Gibraltar at length,5 as well as depicting a fight between the Spanish ‘Señor’ and the Dutch ‘Sailor’. The figures’ dress may have been borrowed from costume books. The garb of the man immediately to the right of the sailor, for example, resembles that of the Venetian magistrate in Cesare Vecellio’s book of 1590.6 The painting is neither signed nor dated, but the use of colour and Willaerts’s distinctive foam-flecked waves make the attribution very plausible. It was probably made between 1615 and 1630, given the similarities to the artist’s early work. Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 344.
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