Charles Emmanuel Biset
[2] He enjoyed the patronage of Juan Domingo de Zuñiga y Fonseca, Count of Monterrey, and later the Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands for whom he may have worked on a quasi-exclusive basis for a while.
This is for instance the case with the composition A Family Seated at a Table in an Elegant Garden Exterior (Sotheby's, 6 December 2006 in New York, lot 7), which was originally regarded as a collaboration between Gonzales Coques and some specialist artists such as Peeter Gijsels and Wilhelm Schubert van Ehrenberg but is regarded by the RKD specialists as entirely by Biset's hand.
[7] The headmen of the Antwerp schutterij De Oude Voetboog are known to have ordered a group portrait from Biset.
[8] It is likely that this work is the large composition referred to as The Legend of William Tell shown to the Antwerp Schutterij of St Sebastian.
[9] The architecture is painted by Wilhelm Schubert van Ehrenberg and the landscape by Philips Augustijn Immenraet and the rest by Charles Emmanuel Biset.
[12] Genre subjects involving indoor scenes of playing persons were quite popular in Flemish and Dutch painting in the 17th century and in particular among the so-called Caravaggists.
Biset painted similar genre scenes an example of which is his composition the Tric-trac players (Statens Museum for Kunst).
A young male servant is pouring drinks for the company at a table on which also food is placed including oysters, a few of which have fallen on the floor.
The earliest works in this genre depicted art objects together with other items such as scientific instruments or peculiar natural specimens.
[14] An example of Biset's work in this genre is the Interior of an Imaginary Picture Gallery (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) dated to 1666.
Wilhelm Schubert van Ehrenberg painted the architecture as well as the ceiling (which is made up of copies of Rubens' works for the Carolus Borromeuskerk in Antwerp) (later destroyed in a fire).
The painting is a collaboration with each of the individual painters whose work is depicted in the painting and have signed their own work: Theodoor Boeyermans (Daughters of Cecrops and Erychtonius), Pieter Boel (Animal Piece), Jan Cossiers (Diana and Actaeon), Cornelis de Heem (Fruit Still Life), Robert van den Hoecke (Winter Landscape), Philips Augustijn Immenraet (Italianate Landscape), Jacob Jordaens (Gyges and Kandaules and Allegory of Painting), Pieter Thijs (Adoration of the Shepherds), Lucas van Uden (Landscape) and the monogrammists missed PB (Fish Still Life) and PVI or PVH (Satyr and Nymph).
The message of the work appears to be that human endeavours as expressed in personal writings are futile as death is the ultimate outcome.
This includes the book on mushrooms by the priest Franciscus van Sterbeeck entitled Theatrum fungorum oft het toneel der campernoelien ... vergaedert ende beschreven door Franciscus van Sterbeeck, which was published by Joseph Jacobs in Antwerp in 1675 and by the same author and publisher the Citricultura oft Regeringhe der uythemsche boomen te weten oranien, citroenen, limoenen, granaten, laurieren en andere on the cultivation of non-native trees, published in 1682 in Antwerp.
