Max Rooses, “De Vlaamsche Kunst in de 17e eeuw tentoongesteld in het Jupelpaleis te Brussel in 1910: de schilderijen”, in Onze Kunst, 10 (1911), pp. 1-12.
Idem, “Exposition de l’art flamand au XVIIe siècle au Palais du Cingantenaire à Bruxelles en 1910” in L’Art flamand et hollandais, Brussels, 1911, p. 62.
P. Lambotte, Trésor de l’art belge au XVIIe siècle: Mémorial de l’exposition d’art ancient à Bruxelles en 1910, vol. 1, Brussels-Paris, 1912, p. 290, pl. CXXVI
Le Folklore Brabançon, Léau et son Exposition d’art, d’archéologie et de folklore, 4, October 1924-February 1925, p. 94, pl. 50.
Matías Díaz Padrón, La pintura flamenco del Siglo XVII en España, vol. 4 [dissertation], Madrid, 1976, pp. 1336-1337.
D. Diaz Padrón, Catálogo de la Exposicion Homenaje de Pedro Pablo Rubens, 1977, p. 40 (with incorrect measurements)
Apollo: The Magazine of Art, 274 (1984), p. 33.
E. Mayer, Annuaire international des ventes: peinture – sculpture, Paris, 1985, p. 778.
The Burlington Magazine, 127 (1985), p. 42, fig. 52
Karolien de Clippel, Joos van Craesbeeck (1605/06-c. 1660): Een Brabants Genreschilder, vol. I, p. 114-117, illustrated vol. II, p. 454, fig. 2. 

Born around 1605/06 in Neerlinter (now a village in Flemish Brabant, Belgium), Joos van Craesbeeck followed a somewhat unusual career trajectory.  Initially, he practised the baker’s trade, like other members of his family, but after moving to Antwerp he took up painting.  He probably received at least part of his artistic training from Adriaen Brouwer (1603/05-1638), whose low-life tavern scenes were the starting point for his own early work.  In 1633-34, he was enrolled as both a painter and a baker in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke, and he probably continued to combine both activities for a while.  Around 1651, he moved to Brussels where he joined the local painters’ guild and devoted himself exclusively to his art. 

Craesbeeck is best known as a painter of genre scenes, though he also painted some allegories and a few portraits and religious subjects.  His work is relatively easy to recognise as he developed a highly individual style, and many of his pictures bear his monogram: a few are fully signed, but none are dated.  The absence of dated paintings has made it hard to establish a reliable chronology for his oeuvre, however, the broad outlines of his development can be gauged by comparing his paintings with the dated work of certain of his contemporaries.  His early paintings were strongly influenced by Adriaen Brouwer, both in terms of subject matter and style, but after Brouwer’s death, David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690) became his main source of inspiration.  In his later years, his work underwent an evolution more or less in parallel to that of Teniers and David Ryckaert III (1612-1661).  In the 1640s, under the influence of Teniers, he expanded his thematic repertoire to include middle-class interiors with card players and musical companies, outdoor genre scenes, painters’ studios and depictions of the Temptation of St. Anthony.  At the same time, he replaced the smoky monochrome tonality of his early work with a clearer, brighter colouring.  After moving to Brussels, he added pastel shades and bright colour accents to his palette and developed a rich chiaroscuro in the manner of Rembrandt. 

Ecce Homo belongs to the late phase of Craesbeeck’s career when he was working in Brussels.  The subject is taken from the New Testament (John: 19:4-16). The words “Ecce Homo” (“Behold the Man”), inscribed on a crumpled piece of paper pinned to the balcony, are those spoken by Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea, to the Jews gathered outside the judgement hall.  Here, Pilate, an old, bearded man in a turban, leads Jesus onto a small balcony overlooking a cobbled square, saying “Here he is; I am bringing him out to let you know that I find no case against him”.  Jesus appears beside him, his hands bound, and wearing a loincloth, and the crown of thorns and purple cloak that his captors had placed upon him.  He has been flogged and mockingly dressed as the King of the Jews by his Roman captors.  His posture and expression speak of suffering and utter weariness, but the hostile throng below shows him no pity.  The chief priests and their henchmen call for him to be executed, shouting “Crucify him! crucify him!”  Seeing that he could not prevail and fearing further unrest, Pilate reluctantly bows to the demands of the mob and hands Jesus over to the soldiers to be crucified. 

Craesbeeck staged the scene in a narrow, cobbled square outside the judgement hall.  The imposing weight of the building rising on the right is accentuated by the painting’s upright format, while its diagonal thrust creates a strongly three-dimensional space.  In the background, the sun-lit towers and domes of Jerusalem appear against an orange-tinged sky.  Through his use of light and dark illumination Craesbeeck focuses our attention upon the angry throng gathered in the foreground and the figures on the balcony.  Christ appears isolated and vulnerable standing on the balcony before the sea of hostile faces below and the pikemen jostling in the cramped space behind him.  A wide cross-section of the population, including young women and babies, children and grey-haired old men, members of the clergy, pikemen in their blue and yellow uniforms, and an Oriental in a splendid plumed turban mounted on a grey horse, has turned out to witness this moment when Christ’s fate was sealed.  The drama of the occasion is captured in the varying facial expressions and gestures of the people in the crowd.  In a dimly lit corner of the square three wooden crosses rise above their heads, a stark reminder of events to come.  The warm palette, with accents of blue, yellow, orange and white, and the Rembrandtesque chiaroscuro are characteristic of Craesbeeck’s work from his late career.

One of Craesbeeck’s few religious paintings, Ecce Homo is also one of his most ambitious works.  Both the exceptional subject matter, and unusually large format raise the question as to what inspired him to undertake a project of this kind.  It is hard to imagine that he produced it for the open market, but as no information survives that provides clues to an occasion or person for whom it was commissioned, we remain none the wiser.  The only other comparable painting in the artist’s oeuvre is The Massacre of the Innocents (St Florian Monastery, Linz)[i], his largest work, to which the Ecce Homo is closely related.  In that painting he also chose to illustrate a New Testament theme, deploying a complex, multi-figured composition, but in a horizontal format, and, as in the Ecce Homo, he arranged the crowds of figures diagonally in front of an imposing architectural backdrop.  A grey horse, seen from behind in the identical pose to the one in the Ecce Homo, also recurs as an eye-catching motif in the bottom right-hand corner.

Like many painters of his time, Craesbeeck often borrowed ideas from other artists.  When faced with venturing into the unfamiliar field of religious painting, it should come as no surprise that he relied upon examples by artists who specialised in this genre.  In this case, as Karolien de Clippel and others have pointed out, he appears to have found a model for the general compositional scheme and the lighting in Rembrandt’s etched Ecce Homo of 1635-36, while the Oriental horseman in the foreground recalls a very similar figure in Nicolaes de Bruyn’s print of Ecce Homo[ii]. 

Nothing is known about Craesbeeck’s activities in the decade leading up to his registration in the Brussels painters’ guild in 1651, or what prompted him to make the move from Antwerp.  It is likely to have been driven partly by economic necessity.  Archival records show that he was regularly in debt and around mid-century the economy of Antwerp was in decline.  It has also been suggested that Craesbeeck’s relocation was linked to that of David Teniers the Younger, who arrived in Brussels around the same time to take up the appointment of court painter to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, Governor of the Southern Netherlands[iii]. It seems likely that encouraged by the success of Teniers, who he may have known personally and was, like himself, primarily a genre painter, Craesbeeck felt that his prospects were better in Brussels, where the Archduke resided and had his court.  A cousin of King Philip IV of Spain, Leopold Wilhem was an enthusiastic collector and generous patron of the arts.  During his tenure as Governor of the Southern Netherlands from 1647 to 1656, he amassed one of the great princely collections of Europe.  In addition to making important acquisitions of Italian Old Masters, he eagerly acquired works by both early and contemporary Flemish artists, including painters of the lower genres. 

Whatever his motivation, Craesbeeck’s move to Brussels seems to have paid off.  Judging from the fact that not long after his arrival he registered first one pupil in the guild and then another, he must have enjoyed a certain reputation at this time.  In the stimulating environment of the court city, it is likely that he found a new audience for his work and was able to undertake commissions for patrons with a taste for more elevated subjects such as the Ecce Homo. 

The provenance of this painting shows that it was once part of the collection formed by Michel van Gelder (1864-1929).  Michel and his wife Irma were dealers and collectors, who amassed an important collection of Old Master Paintings in the early twentieth century.  According to the recently published papers relating to their collection, their dining-room at the Château Zeecrabbe, in Uccle, in Belgium, was hung with Dutch and Flemish 17^th-century pictures. 

BIOGRAPHY

Born around 1605/06 in Neerlinter, in Brabant, Joos van Craesbeeck was the son of Joos van Craesbeeck Senior and his second wife Gertruid van Callenborch.  His father was a baker, but he also served as an alderman and captain of the local militia.  Initially, Joos the Younger took up the family trade and became a baker.  By 1630, he was in Antwerp, where on 15 October of that year, he appeared before an Antwerp notary and signed a marriage contract with Johanna Tielens, the daughter of a baker, whose family had run the bakery in the Antwerp Citadel for several decades.  She was also a niece of the landscape painter Jan Tielens (1589-1630). The couple was married on 22 January 1631, and their son, Jozef, was baptised shortly afterwards on the 9^th of February, but he probably did not live long as his name is not mentioned again in any documents.  On 25 July 1631, Van Craesbeeck became an Antwerp citizen at which time he gave his occupation as baker.  Around this time, he moved to a house located close to the Citadel.  In 1633/34, he enrolled in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke as both a painter and a baker.  The name of his teacher is not recorded, but it is generally assumed that he received at least part of his training from Adriaen Brouwer (1603/05-1638) owing to the stylistic similarities between his early work and that of Brouwer.  It is possible that he got to know Brouwer in 1633, when Brouwer was imprisoned in the Citadel, probably for tax evasion.  At this time Craesbeeck worked as a baker in his wife’s family business, supplying bread to the Citadel.  Craesbeeck’s early biographers, Cornelis de Bie[iv] and Arnold Houbraken[v], both assert that the relationship between Craesbeeck and his near contemporary Brouwer began as a friendship and a shared love of drinking together in the tavern.  Houbraken explicitly states that Brouwer, who had registered in the Antwerp painters’ guild in 1631/32, gave lessons to Craesbeeck.  He also paints a colourful picture of Craesbeeck, who he claims, like Brouwer, led a drunken and dissolute life. However, this characterisation of the artist should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt as Houbraken is known for his inclination to embroider the truth.

In 1637, Craesbeeck was widowed and obtained an inheritance.  That year he is recorded as the owner of a new house with a bakery in Antwerp.  It seems that from this time on he was able to devote himself exclusively to painting.  His whereabouts between 1637 and 1651, the year in which he became a citizen of Brussels and registered as a painter in the local painters’ guild, are unknown since the documentary sources for this period are silent.  His move to Brussels may have been prompted by that of David Teniers the Younger, who settled in Brussels around 1650.  ln Brussels, Craesbeeck must have enjoyed a certain reputation for in 1653-54 he registered two pupils with the guild.  The date of his death is not recorded, but it must have occurred between 1660 and 1661.  He was evidently still active in 1660, when he registered a new pupil, Lucas Vitersl, however, a year later in his Het Gulden Cabinet Cornelis de Bie noted that he was deceased.