Theodoor van Thulden. Antiochus and Stratonice

inscribed on the emblem on the table cloth lower right: Prudentia relevant amorem - oil on canvas - 140 by 235 cm - Estimate 100,000—150,000 EUR

PROVENANCE : Collection Freiherr von Brabeck, Schloss Söder, Hildesheim, by 1792;
Anonymous sale, Hannover, 31 November 1859, lot 259;
Collection Prince Stolberg, Schloss Wernigerode;
Thence by descent.

EXHIBITED : Halle, Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg, by 1960, inv. no. I/1373 (according to a label on the reverse).

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES : A. Roy, Theodoor van Thulden. Een Zuidnederlandse barokschilder, exhibition catalogue, Zwolle 1992, pp. 155-6, cat. no. 16, reproduced.

NOTE : The love story of Antiochus and Stratonice was very well known in the 17th and 18th Century, as at least five written operas from the period 1658-1792 are left to us. Valerius Maximus tells this story in his Facta et dicta memorabilia (V,7), and this may be the source that Van Thulden followed. The young prince Antiochus lies stretched on his bed with the expression of a dying man. This is a result of his secret passion for his stepmother, the fair Stratonice, standing on his right side. His father, Seleukos I Nicator, seated to the far left, holds his royal sceptre with a gaze that reveals the hopelessness of his son's condition. His doctor Erasistratos, standing to the right of Antiochus, intelligently observed the cause of sickness when his pulse increased when Stratonice entered the room. When Erasistratos revealed the cause of Antiochus' illness, Seleukos magnanimously ceded Stratonice so the two lovers could be united. An inscription and emblem on the table rug to the far right reinforces the moral: Prudentia relevant amorem (wisdom helps love), with the figure of Prudentia looking over a sleeping Cupid.

According to Alain Roy, the painting can be dated to circa 1640 as the style, composition, the architectural elements and the figure of Stratonice are find parallels in another work by Van Thulden, The Continence of Scipio, a version of which is dated 1638.¹

It is possible that the present painting was that seen by Sir Joshua Reynolds, when he visited Mr. Dasch in Antwerp in 1781, which was then believed to be by the hand of Rubens:

'At Mr. Dasch's there is a great picture of Rubens; the story of Seleukos and Stratonice. The miserable attitude of the lying son on the bed is of unseen beauty; the composition of the ensemble is good.'

No known work of Rubens treats this subject, but as Stechow pointed out, for this to be the same picture Van Thulden's painting would have to have been seen by Reynolds in Antwerp only eleven years prior to when it was catalogued in the Söder collection.²

1. Private Collection. Reproduced by Roy under Literature, pp. 153-4, fig. 85.
2. W. Stechow, 'The Love of Antiochus with fair Stratonice in Art', in Art Bulletin, 27, 1945, pp. 221-37.

Sotheby's. Old Master Paintings. 11 Nov 08. Amsterdam. www.sothebys.com. photo courtesy Sotheby's