Flemish painter of the first half of the 17th century, Nascendo Morimur

Flemish painter of the first half of the 17th century

Born Morimur

Oil on canvas, 55 x 45 cm

With frame, 64 x 53 cm

The allegorical painting commonly identified with the title Nascendo morimur is the work of a Flemish painter active in the first half of the 17th century, deeply indebted to the figurative tradition developed in Antwerp in the previous century and, in particular, to the models developed by Frans Floris. The work is part of a line of iconographic and conceptual continuity that, through the circulation of prototypes and the mediation of his workshop, reaches all the way to Nordic Baroque sensibility. The painting shows a young naked boy sitting on a stone plinth. The body, solid and plastic, is rendered with a strong attention to anatomical modeling, while the pose introduces a complex symbolic system: the right foot rests on a skull, an evident allusion to death, while the right arm rests on a depleted hourglass, an emblem of time passed and the transience of existence. These elements clearly lead back to the repertoire of the Vanitas, a central theme in moral reflection between the 16th and 17th centuries. The gesture of the right arm, stretched towards the background, invites the viewer to observe the scene behind, where we can glimpse the Resurrection of Christ, the only possible answer to the human finiteness evoked in the foreground. From an iconographic point of view, the work reworks a specific model: the Allegory by Frans Floris today in a private collection, which was later reformulated, by Floris himself or by an artist from his circle, in a painting formerly entitled Nascendo morimur which is now in the collections of the National Museum in Stockholm. The meaning of the motto, “we are born to die,” is here expanded in a Christological key, contrasting physical death with the promise of resurrection. This dialectic between mors and salus constitutes the conceptual core of the image. Frans Floris, born Frans de Vriendt in Antwerp in 1516, son of the stonemason Cornelis I de Vriendt, initially trained as a sculptor, before devoting himself to painting. After his apprenticeship with Lambert Lombard in Liège, he made a decisive journey to Italy, staying in Florence and Rome, where he deeply assimilated the lessons of Italian art. He felt above all the influence of Michelangelo and the Mannerists, in particular Giorgio Vasari and Parmigianino. Returning to Antwerp, Floris founded a workshop of extraordinary size, with over a hundred students, becoming the principal intermediary of Italian models in the Netherlands. In the specific case of the Nascendo morimur, the connection with Parmigianino is particularly evident: the child's face and bust recall the child in the Madonna of the Rose now in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden, as well as the Baby Jesus in the Holy Family with Angels in the Prado Museum.  The work therefore stands as a significant example of the persistence and transformation of Frans Floris' legacy in seventeenth-century Flemish art, demonstrating how his prototypes continued to be relevant and fruitful well beyond his death in Antwerp in 1570.

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