Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 1, 1908.djvu/285

 ii GABRIEL METSU 261 19. Tancred's Daughter. Sale. Izaak Hoogenbergh, Amsterdam, April 10, 1743, No. 35 (16 florins 10). 20. JUSTICE AS THE PROTECTRESS OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS. Justice stands in the centre upon a nude man, typifying vanquished injustice. She wears a seventeenth-century dress with a yellow cloak ; her arms, breasts, and feet are bare, her eyes bandaged. She holds up a pair of scales in her left hand, with a pathetic gesture. With her right hand she holds a sword at the bare breast of the recumbent man. He is wrapped in a purple robe and lies on money-bags, a box of false weights, clipped coins, and other things. A child holds before him a forged bill. Beneath the cloak of Justice, on the right, a weeping widow with a child at her breast takes shelter. Farther to the right kneels a boy, dressed in red, with his hands folded. A little angel holding a crown hovers above the head of Justice. At the back to the left is her throne ; in the right background is a hall hung with green drapery ; in a corner of the foreground are flowers. Painted about 1655. Signed on a step in the foreground " G. Metsu " (though the last letters are illegible) ; canvas, 6i| inches by 49 inches. In the collection of Sara de Witte, widow of Michael van Peenen, in Leyden, in 1667 ; it hung in the vestibule of her house. Sale. Amsterdam, July 25, 1804, No. 51 (200 florins, Pruyssenaar). Acquired for the Mauritshuis after 1817. Now in the Picture Gallery, The Hague, 1905 catalogue, No. 95. 21. THE DEVOUT WOMAN (possibly an "Allegory of Faith," or a " Repentant Magdalen "). At a small altar to the left kneels a girl in white ; her left hand is upon her breast in an attitude of prayer, while her right hand is stretched out. She wears a cloak em- broidered with gold and trimmed with ermine, which has slipped ofF her left shoulder. A basket of roses and fruit stands to the left on the carpet that covers the steps of the altar. Upon the altar are a framed picture of Christ, a candlestick, and a tall vessel ; near it hangs a lamp. In the dark middle distance to the right stands an abbot or bishop under an arch ; a boy precedes him with a lighted torch, and another follows with a mass- book. The picture was attributed to Netscher in 1830, and to Adriaan van der WerfFin 1882, but it is a very characteristic work of Metsu's. Panel, 22 inches by 16 inches; according to Frimmel it may have been .slightly cut down. See Th. von Frimmel, Kleine Galerie-Studien^ new series, iii. 1896, p. 39 seq. Sale. Amsterdam, April 22, 1709, No. 5 (150 florins ; see Hoet, i. 131). Since 1775 at latest in the possession of the Schonborn family. Now in the collection of Count Schonborn-Buchheim, Vienna, No. 40. 2itf. The repentant Mary Magdalen. She kneels before a crucifix. It is a powerful and masterly painting. Canvas, 1 1 inches by 9 inches. Sale. Amsterdam, August 6, 1810, No. 70.