Heinrich Franz Gaudenz von Rustige (1810 – 1900) - L'atelier di un pittore di corte spagnolo del Seicento

Heinrich Franz Gaudenz von Rustige (1810–1900)
View of the studio of a seventeenth-century Spanish court painter, 1856
Oil on canvas, 79 x 68 cm – Framed, 92 x 83 cm
Signed and dated lower left: Rustige 1856

In the heart of a vast hall with imposing vaulted ceilings, Heinrich Franz Gaudenz von Rustige creates a highly theatrical scene in which the architecture dominates the figures and envelops them in warm light. The oil painting on canvas depicts the studio of a seventeenth-century Spanish court painter, shown at work on a canvas placed on an easel and seen from a three-quarter angle. Behind him, two patrons—a gentleman and a lady in a blue dress, both prominent members of the royal court—watch the artist at work with composure and curiosity, while on the left, around a table covered with a red cloth, other figures leaf through large sheets of paper and converse.
The space in which the scene unfolds is typically Spanish, marked by the influence of Arab architecture on the Iberian Peninsula. The large arch dominating the room is a classic horseshoe arch, a central feature of the Umayyad architecture of Córdoba and Hispano-Moorish art. In the background on the left is a bifora, or ajimez, with slender marble columns topped by finely carved capitals inspired by Alexandrian style and the art of al-Andalus; through it, a garden and blue sky can be glimpsed. The sturdy foreground pier, with its foliate capital, also evokes a building of Islamic heritage adapted for secular use.
The figures’ clothing, by contrast, places the scene in the seventeenth century: the painter wears a dark doublet with white sleeves and knee-length breeches, while the gentleman is dressed in the black Spanish costume with a ruff collar, in the classic style of the reign of Philip II. The furnishings complete the setting: a green leather chair, a table with a metal pitcher, armor and a sword hanging on the wall, paintings leaning against the walls, and a tapestry hung on the wall. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo may have been the ideal reference.
The most surprising detail is in the lower right foreground: an elderly woman and a child playing with a dog, seated on a plinth covered with a green cloth, with a folding screen behind them. Their humble clothing and natural gestures seem out of place in the rest of the scene, but they are in fact the models the painter is portraying: part of the female figure can be seen on the canvas on the easel, in an effective picture-within-a-picture device. This recalls Murillo’s genre paintings, such as Boys with Melons and Grapes, now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, subjects the artist painted from life in his studio.
Rustige, a German painter specializing in historical and genre subjects, trained in Düsseldorf under Wilhelm von Schadow from 1828 and exhibited there from 1832. After settling in Frankfurt am Main in 1836, he made study trips to Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, France, and England. From 1845 he taught at the Stuttgart Academy, where he served as inspector of the gallery and print collections, and directed the gallery until 1897. Awarded the Order of the Crown of Württemberg, which conferred a noble title upon him, he was named an honorary citizen of Werl in 1890.

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