Gerard Seghers

After a period of study and residence in Italy, he returned to Flanders where he became one of the leading representatives of the Flemish Caravaggisti movement.

In his later career he abandoned the Caravaggist style and genre motifs to become an important painter of large altarpieces for local churches.

[5] The Society's membership consisted principally of citizens from the elite and wealthy middle classes including artists and merchants.

At the same time Seghers used the stay in Italy to further his training as a painter and make copies after famous Italian paintings.

[4] However, the lack of mention of the artist in contemporary Spanish sources, casts doubt on this supposed sojourn in Spain.

[2] It is assumed that in the period 1624 to 1627 he visited or resided in Utrecht where he would have met the leading Carravagist Gerard van Honthorst whom he likely knew from Rome.

[4] In Antwerp Seghers was successful as a painter and art dealer and was able to afford a house on the fashionable Meir.

He was employed by the city authorities of both Antwerp and Ghent as one of the many artists working on the festive decorations for the Joyous Entry of Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, the new governor of the Southern Netherlands, in 1635.

Seghers' contribution to the Ghent decorations was based on a design by Rubens and was later engraved by Jacob Neefs with the title Belgica implores Charles V to let Ferdinand rule the country and published by Jan van Meurs in Antwerp in a publication on the Joyous Entry into Ghent.

By the time he died in Antwerp in 1651, Seghers was a wealthy man who owned a comfortable house and an extensive art collection.

Caravaggism, both in history and monumental genre paintings, continued to mark Seghers's work after his return to Antwerp.

A work from this early period is his Judith with the Head of Holofernes in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome as well as The Denial of Saint Peter in the North Carolina Museum of Art.

Seghers was mainly interested in depicting people of flesh and blood, preferably in a moment of crisis which allowed the artist to paint their various facial expressions.

[13] After 1630, his palette lightened up considerably and the dark background was replaced by architectural motifs, clouds and landscape elements.

[4] This influence went even so far that in his painting the Adoration of the Magi (1630, Church of Our Lady, Bruges) he adopted Rubens' composition for his treatment of the same subject.