Karl Breydel, known as The Knight of Antwerp (Antwerp, 1678-1733), Battle scene between Christians and Turks 

Karl Breydel, called The Antwerp Knight (Antwerp, 1678-1733)

Battle scene between Christians and Turks

Oil on canvas, 28,5 x 41 cm

The painting in question, considering the style, the composition and the subjects represented, can be attributed to the Antwerp master Karl Breydel (1678-1733).

Most of the information on Breydel's life is based on the first biography of the Flemish artist written by Jean-Baptiste Descamps in the second half of the eighteenth century (La Vie des Peintres Flamands, Allemands et Hollandois, vol. 1, 1764, pp. 190-195): the writing of a monograph entirely devoted to Breydel's pictorial production so soon after his death in 1733 is a demonstration of the author's enormous critical success since the mid-eighteenth century. A pupil first of Pieter Ykens (1648-1695) and then of Pieter Rysbrack (1655–1729) from 1695, he travelled extensively both in Italy and Germany, staying in Frankfurt and Nuremberg, where, having learned of the success of his brother Frans, he immediately joined him to serve at the court of Hasse-Kassel. Here, the two brothers worked together for two years with considerable success. In 1703 he moved to Amsterdam, joining the City Guild (the city's arts and crafts corporation) and beginning his career as a battle painter. In fact, following in the footsteps of his master Rysbrack and the Brueghels, perceived as ideal mentors in the early phase of his career, he had, up until that moment, established himself as a landscape painter. Breydel's battle production is certainly the most distinctive of his particular pictorial style, which follows the path of Adam Frans van der Meulen (1632-1690), the leading battle painter in Antwerp in the 20th century. In addition to the court of Nuremberg, from the XNUMXs onwards the artist also worked in Antwerp, his hometown, where he was a member of the Guild of Saint Luke, Brussels and Ghent, obtaining important recognition. Many of this prolific master's paintings are in European museums, including the Royal Museums of Brussels and the National Gallery in London.

His battles, usually in a reduced exhibition metre, are rich in characters, with spacious landscape settings, as in the case of the present painting, in which Breydel has combined one of his "classic" battle views with a Rhine landscape, a genre which continued to enjoy great popularity throughout the 18th century.