Louis de Caullery

This riotous carnival scene by Louis de Caullery falls into a tradition of Flemish painting mastered by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569) in the sixteenth century. The perspective, imaginary architectural setting and densely arranged figures looks back to Bruegel's famous The Fight Between Carnival and Lent preserved in the Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna. Vast scenes of entertainments and social dissipation proved an attractive subject amongst northern artists during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

An artist famous for his lively depictions of characters and their costumes, Caullery here devotes great attention to each of the figures assembled within the mannerist architectural space. Rare surviving drawings attest to the figure studies the artist would make, presumably to be inserted into vastly detailed paintings such as this one.¹ Amongst the revelers on display are street musicians, actors, dwarves, stilt walkers and equestrian sports. At the front of a grand parade is a sleigh bearing a character dressed as a wine barrel, a sure sign of the excesses of food and drink on offer during such celebrations. At the rear, a group of armed and costumed riders wait to make a grand entrance heralded by trumpets and horns. Contrasted against the more rowdy participants are the more reserved elegant courtiers standing in their finery next to doorways and observing at a distance from balconies. 

At least three other versions of this composition are known: one, perhaps the primary version, featuring a different arrangement of figures, was sold from the Marshall Collection in 1974;² another simplified version was sold anonymously at Christie's, New York, 12 January 1996, lot 53; and a third related painting of a Carnival in a City Square, which bears the artist signature, taken from a lower view point and containing a much deeper perspective, is preserved in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg.³

¹ For a discussion of de Caullery's drawings see D. Beaujean, ‘Louis de Caulery as a Draftsman’, in Master Drawings, vol. XXXVI, no. 4, Winter 1998, pp. 398–408.

² M.D. Padrón and M. Royo-Villanova, ‘Una Crucifixion de Louis de Caulery en el Museum del Prado’, in Boletín del Museo del Prado, 1993, p. 44, fig. 3 reproduced.

³ P. Hartung, Katalog der Alten Meister der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg 1966, p. 40, no. 413 reproduced.