Page of The Ford by WEENIX, Jan Baptist in the Web Gallery of Art, a searchable image collection and database of European paintings and sculptures (1100-1850)

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The Ford

1647
Oil on canvas, 100 x 131,5 cm
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Jan Baptist Weenix was a versatile Italianate painter. He is best known for his views of the Campagna with emphasis on a mother and child seen against massive classical ruins, and fanciful Mediterranean seaports , but he also painted histories, portraits, and indoor genre scenes as well as some remarkable still lifes with dead game. His son and pupil Jan Weenix (1642-1719) made a speciality of pictures of hunting trophies. Jan Baptist Weenix arrived in Rome in 1642-43 where he enjoyed the patronage of 'Kardinaal Pamfilio', who has been variously identified as Cardinal Giovanni Battista Pamphili, who became Pope Innocent X in 1644, and as the Pope's nephew Cardinal Camillo Pamphili. After he returned to Holland in 1646-47 he invariably signed himself Gio[vanni] Batt[ist]a Weenix. His adoption of the Italian translation of his Christian name and patronymic may have been in honour of Innocent X who gave him at least one commission.

The artist executed this painting after his Italian journey.