Although Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts enjoyed a successful career, surprisingly little is known about his life and work. His reputation today, as in the seventeenth century, rests primarily on his extraordinary trompe-l’oeil paintings. His surviving oeuvre consists of some seventy paintings, the earliest of which are vanitas still lifes of a traditional type. From about 1662-63, Gysbrechts specialised in trompe-l’oeil still lifes, ranging from letter racks, to depictions of musical instruments, or hunting implements and trophies hanging before a panelled wall, studio walls with vanitas still lifes and the so-called chantournés – trompe-l’oeil pictures cut out in wood or canvas. Much of his best work was created for the Danish kings Frederic III and Christian V, the bulk of which is preserved in the museum in Copenhagen[i].

Whilst there were precedents for illusionistic paintings in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Gysbrechts most probably found his inspiration in the art of his Dutch contemporaries, in particular in the work of the painter and art theorist Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678), whose exploration of trompe-l’oeil representations and other illusionistic genres began in the early 1650s. Although Gysbrechts was undoubtedly indebted to van Hoogstraten for many of his ideas, he went on to produce larger and even more elaborate compositions than those of van Hoostraten. With his studio wall paintings, which begin in 1663, Gysbrechts invented a completely new trompe-l’oeil theme.

In this example, dated 1666, the viewer comes face to face with a panelled wall, represented life-size. One of the artist’s vanitas still lifes is propped up against the blond-coloured wood, together with his palette, a bundle of brushes and a paint box. The canvas is laced to a stretcher, but one corner has become detached and flops forward, revealing a frayed edge. A palette knife is wedged behind the top of the stretcher and a maulstick is placed diagonally in front of it: a small bottle of varnish hangs from a nail on the right. Pinned to the wall on the left, is a small oval portrait of a gentleman in a skullcap – perhaps the artist’s patron – while beneath the painting, are a small self-portrait and a letter addressed to “Monsieur Gysbrechts schilder …”. In the “painting within the painting”, a group of objects symbolising the transience of earthly existence appears on a table. The most obvious of these are a burned-out candle, a lamp and an overturned drinking glass, but in this context, almost all the objects have vanitas connotations. On the right, stands an empty mussel shell, containing a soap solution and a straw for blowing bubbles: several bubbles float above the group of still-life objects, serving as reminders of the fragility of life. Nevertheless, the ears of corn, as symbols of the resurrection, offer a more hopeful message to the Christian believer: for just as the grains of corn when buried in the earth burst forth once again into life, so, the faithful find eternal life beyond the veil of death (‘Mors vitae initium’ – ‘Death is the beginning of life’).

This trompe l’oeil of a studio wall exemplifies this powerfully illusionistic form of still-life painting, in which a group of objects seems to occupy the shallow space in front of a wooden partition. Unlike a conventional still life which sets out to suggest the existence of a three-dimensional world that recedes in space, here the panelled wall emphasises the solidity of the picture plane, creating the impression that the various items project forward into the viewer’s space. The boundary between the actual and virtual worlds has become blurred and the objects seem, if only momentarily, palpable. The artist’s careful observation of a variety of textures and the subtle play of light and shadow enhance this illusion. Particularly effective are the folded and crumpled documents, the loose corner of the canvas and the still-wet daubs of paint on the palette, some of which have begun to run.

Gysbrecht’s oeuvre contains a small group of similarly conceived studio wall paintings, in which traditional vanitas still lifes are incorporated into trompe l’oeils. Our painting can be most closely compared with a painting of 1665 in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes[ii] and another of 1668 in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen[iii]. The latter was amongst the first paintings produced by Gysbrechts for the Danish monarch and may have helped to secure his appointment as court painter. By including the tools of his trade in these paintings, Gysbrechts calls attention to the craft of the painter. At the same time, his own role in the creation of these witty deceptions is highlighted by his signature on the “paintings within the paintings” and by the inclusion of other personal references. The conceit of the canvas coming away from the stretcher, however, seems to invite us to reflect upon the nature of art itself. For a moment, we are lead to believe that a still life painting stands before us, but no, it is merely an illusion of reality, made from paint and canvas and no more real than the objects it depicts: the art of illusion, like the world of the senses, is ephemeral.

Illusionistic images were much admired by European collectors of the day, particularly in court circles and among the urban elites. In 1651, the twenty-four year old van Hoogstraten captured the attention of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, when he arrived at his court in Vienna and presented the emperor with a trompe-l’oeil still life that was so cunningly painted that he was taken in by it. Indeed, the emperor was so impressed with the picture’s deceptive realism that he rewarded the young painter with a gold chain and a medallion. Gysbrechts may very well have become familiar with van Hoogstraten’s experiments in illusionism through the Hapsburg connections of their local Spanish court.

The contemporary fascination with illusionistic effects is reflected in the art theoretical writings of van Hoogstraten and others. In 1678, van Hoogstraten published his influential treatise, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst: anders de zichtbaere werelt (Introduction to the elevated school of painting, or, the visible world) in which he stated that “A perfect painting is like a mirror of Nature, in which things that are not there appear to be there and which deceives in an acceptable, amusing and praiseworthy fashion”[iv]. He also held up as a measure of excellence the imitative skills of Zeuxis and Parrhasios, two painters from antiquity, whose works were reputed to be so lifelike that they could fool the eye. According to Pliny’s tale, Zeuxis’s was able to depict grapes so naturalistically that birds tried to peck at the painted image. His artistry, however, was surpassed by the even greater achievement of Parrhasios, whose painting of a curtain was so true to life that Zeuxis himself attempted to pull it aside in order to see the painting that he believed lay beneath. From such references, it is clear that van Hoogstraten and other seventeenth-century artists compared their own efforts to achieve a convincing illusion of reality with the art of ancient Greece.

Anecdotes about the reactions of contemporaries to trompe-l’oeil paintings abound, but amongst the most revealing are the comments of the English diarist Samuel Pepys, which convey a sense of the wonderment and delight elicited by viewers of such deceptions. In 1660, Pepys reported that he had seen the “most incomparable pictures” in the king’s closet, including “a book open upon a desk which I durst have sworn was a reall book”[v]. On 15^th March 1668, he wrote that he was “mightily pleased with a picture … of several things painted upon a deal Board, which board is so well painted in my whole life I never was so pleased or surprised with any picture, and so troubled that so good pictures should be painted up a piece of bad deal; even after I knew it was not a board, but only the picture of a board, I could not remove my fancy… “[vi]. Paradoxially, as these accounts make clear, the moment of success for a trompe l’oeil occurs when the viewer realises that he has been fooled and, therefore, takes pleasure in the virtuosity of the artist who created such a lifelike image.

It is likely that Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts was born in Antwerp, where in 1660, he became a master of the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke, entering as the son of a member (probably the art dealer François Gysbrechts who entered the guild in 1637-38). The name of his teacher is not recorded, but he may conceivably have received part of his training in Leiden, since his earliest dated painting of 1657 is a vanitas still life. He is recorded in Regensburg in 1664, where the French diplomat and connoisseur Balthasar de Monconys visited his studio on 17 March and later bought one of his letter rack paintings[vii]. Between 1665 and 1668, Gysbrechts was probably working in Hamburg, and from 1668 to 1672, he was in Copenhagen, where he served as court painter to the Danish kings Frederick III and Christian V. Since none of his Danish pictures bears a date later than 1672 and the last payment to him in the accounts from paintings executed for the king is on 1 April 1672, he presumably left the country that year to go to Stockholm, where he seems to have spent a couple of years. He then most probably returned to Germany, since a painting dated 1675 contains a depiction of a letter addressed to the artist in Breslau (present-day Wroclow in Poland), now in Warsaw. This is the painter’s last dated work, after which time his fate is unknown.

Gysbrechts was certainly a relation – perhaps a brother or nephew - of Franciscus Gysbrechts (fl. 1672 – in or after 1676), who joined the painters’ guild in Leiden in 1674 and the Antwerp guild in 1676. His small known oeuvre consists of vanitas still lifes and trompe l’oeil depictions of windows and vitrines.

P.M.

[i] See: Olaf Koetser, Painted Illusions: The Art of Cornelius Gijsbrechts, exh. cat., National Gallery,

London, 2000.

[ii] Cornelis Gysbrechts, Trompe l’Oeil of a Studio Wall with a Vanitas Still Life, signed and dated 1665, on canvas, 120 x 106 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes, Valenciennes, inv. cno. P.46.1.111.

[iii] Cornelis Gysbrechts, Trompe l’Oeil with Studio Wall and Vanitas Still Life, signed and dated 1668,

on canvas 152 x 118 cm, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, inv. no. KMSST537.

[iv] Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst: anders de zichtbaere

werelt, 1678, p. 25.

[v] The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. Latham & W. Matthews, 1970-82, vol. I, p. 257-258, 3^rd

October, 1660.

[vi] The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. Latham & W. Matthews, 1970-82, vol IX, p. 119.

[vii] B. Monconys, Journal des Voyages de M. de Monconys, I-III, Lyon, 1665-66, vol. II, pp. 372, where he describes two pictures shown to him by Gysbrechts: “one of fruits and the other one of a number of letters, quill pens, pen knifes [and] Spanish wax, attached with ribbons nailed onto a board and a curtain half drawn, for which he wants 50 écus”.