Isaac Van Oosten (Antwerp 1613 – 1661), A late Renaissance Antwerp ebony veneered cabinet, circa 1645, with village landscapes and scenes from daily life. Photo Sotheby's

oil on panel; doors closed: 28 by 32 1/4 by 15 in.; 71.1 by 82.6 by 38.1 cm. doors open: 38 1/2 by 62 by 15 in.; 97.8 by 157.5 by 38.1 cm. Estimation 150,000 — 200,000 USD

Provenance: With Galerie de Jonckheere, Paris;
From whom purchased by the present collector.

This attractive and intricately decorated cabinet is an excellent example of the highly skilled furnitre-making practice that flourished in seventeenth-century Antwerp. Cabinets such as these functioned as decorative objects which could simultaneously allow wealthy patrons to display various prized objects, as well as store any personal documents in one of the numerous drawers. As objects for display, they were constructed from a variety of woods for both functional and aesthetic purposes, with the most highly prized being ebony. Cabinet makers would often use ebony only sparingly, typically as a veneer given its rarity and expense, as is the case with the present example.

Cabinet makers employed skilled painters to complete their creations with small pictures. As the popularity of these intricate objects grew, so too did their decoration and and the level of quality in the paintings. Often times, artists would execute compositions with recurrent themes. In this case, scenes from daily village life are illustrated, though in another cabinet of a similar construction, sold New York, Sotheby's, 26 January 2006, lot 122, all eleven panels were decorated with scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Sotheby's. Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture. New York | 30 janv. 2014 - www.sothebys.com