Triumph of Neptune

The triumph of the sea god was a favourite classical subject in the northern Netherlands, and Abraham Bloemaert gave it the crowded, theatrical treatment that Dutch painters of his generation had learned from the Italian Mannerists. Bloemaert was the central figure of painting in Utrecht for more than half a century and the teacher of a whole generation of Dutch artists, Gerrit van Honthorst among them; he ran a large workshop, served as dean of the city’s painters’ guild, and kept pace with every change of taste, moving from the late Mannerism of his earlier years towards the clearer manner he favoured after about 1620. His drawings were collected as eagerly as his paintings, and his pattern books circulated through the print trade for generations. The museum records that this small canvas was later mounted on oak. The painting is held in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.