Lot 03

A Monogramista FEAST OF THE GODS

The painting with the subject of Feast of the Gods is done on a large format and acts as a decorative panel. In Dutch painting of the early 17th century, the subject is very popular, painted very virtuosically on small formats (e.g. Jan Brueghel the Elder, Hendrick van Balen). Sometimes the subject is a means of depicting the artist's patron and his court; in this case, the author was probably inspired by several different designs, from which he assembled a large-scale composition that is distantly related to them. The theme is also called "The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis", Peleus, a legendary hero of ancient Greece, and Thetis, a sea nymph, were the parents of Achilles, whose wedding feast was attended by the Olympian gods. Among them, at the Banquet of the Gods, for example, we can see Mercury wearing his winged hat and carrying a cake in his hand, as well as Dionysus, Neptune, Ganymede or Hephaestus and many others.