Franciscus Carré

FRANCISCUS CARRÉ (Antwerp, c. 1630–1669).
“The Temptation of Saint Anthony,” 1656.
Oil on panel.
The work is registered in the RKD in The Hague, no. 44454.
Signed and dated in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 37.2 x 30.6 cm; 49.8 x 44.8 cm (frame).
An interesting early painting by Franciscus Carré, created in 1656 during his time in The Hague. The painting dates to a particularly interesting period in Carré’s career. In 1656, forty-eight painters from The Hague broke away from the old painters’ guild and founded the Confrerie Pictura, an institution dedicated to defending the professional interests of artists. The work was created precisely in that year, when Carré was active in the city.
The subject of the Temptation of Saint Anthony belongs to one of the most evocative iconographic traditions in Flemish and Dutch painting, characterized by the confrontation of the hermit saint with fantastical creatures, demons, and various manifestations of sin and temptation. The choice of subject is part of a tradition famously initiated by Hieronymus Bosch and continued throughout the 16th and 17th centuries by artists such as Pieter Brueghel the Elder, David Teniers II, David Ryckaert III, and Mattheus van Helmont. This subject allowed artists to combine religious painting with extraordinary imaginative freedom, introducing grotesque creatures, hybrid beings, and fantastical scenes.
Franciscus Carré, whose name also appears as François Carré, was a Dutch painter of Flemish origin who specialized in portraits, genre scenes, and religious painting. He joined the painters’ guild in The Hague in 1650. In 1658, he moved to Amsterdam, where he opened a tavern that eventually went bankrupt in 1661. In 1662, he settled in Leeuwarden, the capital of Friesland, where he worked as a court painter for the stadtholder Willem Frederik van Nassau-Dietz and, after the latter’s death in 1664, for his widow Albertine Agnes. He died in 1669. Two of his sons, Hendrick I and Michiel, were also painters.