ORAZIO GREVENBROECK
Milan, 1676 – Naples, 1739
Naval battle
oil on canvas, cm. 24×57
This small painting depicts a naval battle between sailing ships, upon which Dutch and red-crossed flags are raised, the latter likely the banner of the imperial dynasty of the Habsburg of Spain. Such elements would thus place our painting in the context of the so-called Battle of the Downs (1639), one of the key episodes of the Eighy Years’ War (1568-1648), which broke out following the rebellion of the inhabitants of the United Provinces (modern-day Netherlands) against Spanish rule in those lands. The battle, fought in the Downs of the British Channel between the fleets of the United Provinces and their Spanish-Portuguese opponents, resulted in a resounding defeat for the latter, marking the end of the Spanish naval supremacy and the beginning of Dutch and British dominance in those areas. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) ended the conflict but intensified hostilities between the Netherlands and Great Britain for control of the Channel.
The leading painters of such depictions during this historical period were certainly the Dutch Hendrik Cornelisz Vroom (1562ca-1640) and Pieter Cornelisz van Soest (1600-67), who made this pictorial genre famous throughout virtually the entire European continent, attracting a large number of painters and their followers during the second half of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century.
One of the most interesting painters of this genre was the Dutch-born Milanese artist Orazio Grevenbroeck, whom our painting should be attributed to. The painter was part of a flourishing workshop started by his father, the Dutch artist Giovanni Grevenbroeck (also known as Solfarolo, active in the second half of the seventeenth century), in which the painters Alessandro and Carlo Leopoldo, considered to be his direct descendants, also distinguished themselves in later years. According to the chronicler of the time, Francesco Maria Niccolò Gaburri (1676 – 1742), following in his father’s footsteps, Orazio established himself as a ‘painter of seascapes and views’. Fascinated by the maritime life of Naples, where he was most active, and anchored to his Dutch origins, Orazio developed a keen interest in studying nature and a tendency for narrative through the medium of painting, which tended to be descriptive and structured in composition and iconographic choice.
Furthermore, this work demonstrates the wide echo that the figurative repertorire of Dutch marine painting found in Italy at the turn of the 18th century, likely in the wake of contemporary historical events, such as the naval battles between Christians and Ottomans in the Mediterranea Sea, and the conclusive events of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48).
The fortune of this pictorial genre, which was highly collected for its ‘decorative’ qualities by the rising merchant burgeoisie of the time, suffered a sharp decline from the second half of the 18th century onward, until disappearing almost in its entirety at the beginning of the following century.