Lot number 4014 - Auction 137
DIE KETTEN DES SÜNDENFALLS UND DER GLAUBE, DER DIE FESSELN DES TODES ÜBERWINDET, UM 1580

JACOB DE BACKER Around 1560 Antwerp - 1590/91 ibid (?) THE CHAINS OF THE FALL OF MAN AND THE FAITH THAT OVERCOMES THE CHAINS OF DEATH, C. 1580 Oil on oak panel, partly cradled. 106 x 76 cm (F. 126 x 96 cm). Inscribed at the bottom of the painting: 'COMPEDIBUS MORTAKLE GENUS MOIRS IXIT AHENIS ET PERDAT, VERBI, SPES NOVA NI FACIAT' (The mortal race is bound by death and destroys, as it were, a new hope). Part. vertical cracks, old rest. and overpainting, in need of restoration. Frame. The composition belongs to the cycle of five paintings with allegorical scenes from the life of Jesus, which Julius Müller Hofstede had already surmised in 1973 (Justus Müller Hofstede, Jacques de Backer. Ein Vertreter der Florentinish-Römischen Maniera in Antwerpen, in: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, 35, 1973, p. 254, note 1). On 14 November 2015, Lempertz auctioned the counterparts of the Nativity and the Carrying of the Cross in Cologne under lot 1427. On 17 June 2023, the Crucifixion came up for auction in Frankfurt. Apart from the paintings from the cycle mentioned here and the newly discovered composition offered here, no other paintings have probably survived. Provenance: Westphalian private collection.