Fighting Card Players and DeathJan Lievens(Leiden 1607 – 1674 Amsterdam)ca. 1638
oil on canvas
67 x 84.9 cm
Signed and dated lower right: J. Lievens
JL-107© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. “Fighting Card Players and Death” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited byArthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/(archived December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

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In 1635 Jan Lievens moved from London to Antwerp, perhaps expecting that theComparative Figuresarrival of the new governor-general of the Southern Netherlands, the Cardinal-InfanteFerdinand, would usher in a period of peace and prosperity beneficial to thearts.[1] Lievens soon joined the local painters’ guild and settled into a community ofartists who specialized in low-life genre scenes, landscapes, and still lifes, among
them Adriaen Brouwer (1605/6–38), Jan Davide de Heem (1606–83/84), David
Teniers the Younger (1610–90), and Jan Cossiers (1600–71). In 1635, Brouwer
depicted these artists in a tavern scene, Smokers, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art(fig 1).[2] The most inspirational of them for Lievens was Brouwer, who apparently
encouraged Lievens to depict, once again, rough peasant types comparable to those hehad portrayed in genre scenes at the beginning of his career (fig 2).
Brouwer’s impact on Lievens is particularly evident in two fascinating genre paintingsof peasants confronting death that he executed in 1638, Fighting Card Players andDeath in The Leiden Collection and Greedy Couple Surprised by Death (fig 3).

Fig 1. Adriaen Brouwer, TheSmokers, ca. 1636, oil on panel, 24.4 x
19.1 cm, New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Bequest of MichaelFriedsam, 1931, 32.100.21

Lievens’s paintings, seemingly pendants because they are comparable in size andvisually and thematically related, capture the struggle for survival that Brouwer often
depicted in his genre images of rough-hewn peasants battling each other in inns andtaverns. The brawls that Brouwer depicted, however, are of a different order, for they
do not feature, as did Lievens, Death in the guise of an animated skeleton attacking
his frightened adversaries.
In Fighting Card Players and Death, Death has fully engaged in the battle for humansurvival transpiring between an enraged white-bearded card player who brandishes abeer tankard and his knife-wielding opponent. With a vine wreath wrapped around hisFig 2. Jan Lievens, Card Players, ca.
1625, oil on canvas, 97.5 x 105.4 cm,The Leiden Collection (JL-102)

skull, Death gleefully grabs the latter’s red tunic and prepares to club him with a thighbone. The bulging eyes and pale complexion of the younger player as the card table
falls onto his lap, scattering the cards and the slate on which the score has beentallied, indicate that he is all too aware of his bleak fate. Through the open doorwayof this darkened interior, one sees a landscape with the setting sun, suggestive of theinevitability of death.[3] In Greedy Couple Surprised by Death, the skeletal figure of
Death interrupts an elderly couple in the midst of counting a hoard of money. As theold man tightly clasps their bag of coins, the old woman’s wide-eyed expression

Fig 3. Jan Lievens, A Greedy Couple
Surprised by Death, 1638, oil on panel,
60 x 79 cm, Private Collection

registers her shock at Death’s unwelcome arrival as she desperately tries to push himaway. The clock behind them, however, warns that the moment of reckoning hascome. With a leering smile and head cocked at an angle, Death almost seems to mockthem, enjoying his ghoulish task.
Both these paintings draw their subjects from a well-established iconographic
tradition in Netherlandish art: death can come for anyone at any time. This theme© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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appears in Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Triumph of Death, ca. 1561 (Museo del Prado,Madrid), in which the skeletal dead rise en masse from their graves to snatch theliving from the bustle of daily activities. In addition, Peter Paul Rubens’s earliest

Fig 4. Jan Lievens, Fighting Card
Players and Death, iii/iii, 1638,etching, 20.3 x 26.7 cm, The Leiden
Collection (JL-109)

known drawings are copies after woodcuts from Hans Holbein the Younger’s Danceof Death series, published in 1562. Rubens copied all 49 scenes, which show Deathappearing to the unsuspecting in the midst of everyday life, including a scene of askeleton snatching coins from a miser’s table.[4]While themes related to life’s brevity and the elusiveness of worldly possessions alsooccur in seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painting, they primarily appear in
portraits or vanitas still lifes containing such motifs as an extinguished candle,hourglass, or skull. The jarring appearance of an animated and predatory Death was
far less common, and indicates the strong moralizing quality that Lievens sought toinstill in these works, a theme expressly evident in the inscription added below a
reproductive etching Lievens made of Fighting Card Players and Death (fig 4). The
inscription reads: “The ancient serpent hastens to spread quarrels and hatred, but
death cancels all brawls.” [5]Lievens’s paintings Greedy Couple Surprised by Death and Fighting Card Players andDeath, as well as the print he made after the latter work, all date to 1638. Lievens
undoubtedly created these works in that year in response to the devastating plaguethen ravaging the Netherlands, a plague that claimed the life of, among others,Adriaen Brouwer. The realization that death could come at unexpected moments was
one that must have weighed heavily on the populace, and Lievens, as well as otherDutch and Flemish artists, responded in imaginative and compelling ways to thismortal reality.[6]- Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., 2017

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Fighting Card Players and Death
Page 5 of 7Endnotes
1. This text is derived from the entry written by Meredith Hale and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. in Jan Lievens:
A Dutch Master Rediscovered, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Galleryof Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven,2008), 150–51, no. 35, 36.
2. For this painting, see Walter A. Liedtke, Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2 vols.
(New York, 2007), 1: 10.
3. Lievens seems to have been inspired by Adriaen Brouwer’s paintings of evening landscapes. See, forexample, Brouwer’s Moonlight Landscape, ca. 1635–37, oil on panel, Staatliche Museum zu Berlin,Gemäldegalerie. This painting is illustrated in Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.’s essay in Jan Lievens: A Dutch
Master Rediscovered, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art;
Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008),
152, fig. 2.
4. I. Q. van Regteren Altena, Peter Paul Rubens: Tekeningen naar Hans Holbeins Dodendans, 2 vols.
(Amsterdam, 1977), 2: pl. 37.
5. “Rixas atque odia salagit dispergere serpens / Antiquus, cuncta at iurgia morte cadunt.” The English
translation is taken from Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh.
cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam,Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008), 210, no. 78.
6. See, for example, Joos van Craesbeck (ca. 1605/6–ca. 1660), Brawl Outside an Inn, ca. 1638, oil on
panel, 73 x 103 cm, Museum voor Schoone Kunsten, Antwerp, no. 850, where Death also intrudes in thebrawl.

Provenance(Sale, Christie’s, London, 20 February 1920, no. 40, as by Arent de Gelder [to Goodew for £89.5];[Galerie van Diemen & Co., Amsterdam, ca. 1920; H. M. Clark, London, ca. 1920–21]; sale, Lepke,Berlin, 27 October 1925, no. 62).
Dr. Fred. Schmidt-Benecke, Berlin, 1928; (sale, Wertheim, Berlin, 30 April 1930, no. 56; [Dr. AlbertHeppner, Berlin, 1931]).
Private collection, Germany; [Johnny van Haeften Ltd., London, 1999].
Private collection, The Netherlands, 1999–2009; [Johnny van Haeften Ltd., London, 2009].
From whom purchased by the present owner, 2009.
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Exhibition History
London, Johnny van Haeften Ltd., “Winter Exhibition of 17th-Century Dutch and Flemish Old Master
Paintings,” 1–23 December 1999.
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, “Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered,” 26 October
2008–11 January 2009; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum, 7 February–26 April 2009; Amsterdam,Museum Het Rembrandthuis, 17 May–9 August 2009, no. 36 [lent by the present owner].
Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum, “Emotions: Pain and Pleasure in Dutch Painting of the Golden Age,” 11October 2–15 February 2015 [lent by the present owner].

References
Schneider, Hans. “Lievens.” In Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zurGegenwart. Edited by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, 23: 214. 37 vols. Leipzig, 1907-1950.
Schneider, Hans. Jan Lievens: Sein Leben und seine Werke. Haarlem, 1932. Reprinted with supplement
by Rudi E.O. Ekkart, Amsterdam, 1973, 126–27, no. 137, 328.
Klessmann, Rüdiger, ed. Jan Lievens: Ein Maler im Schatten Rembrandts. Exh. cat. Brunswick, Herzog
Anton Ulrich-Museum. Brunswick, 1979, 104, under no. 34.
Ekkart, Rudi E.O. “Die streitenden Spieler und der Tod.” In Jan Lievens: Ein Maler im Schatten
Rembrandts. Edited by Rüdiger Klessmann, 207, under no. 111. Exh. cat. Brunswick, Herzog Anton
Ulrich-Museum. Brunswick, 1979.
Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. 6 vols. Landau and Pfalz, 1983–94. 3: 1783, no.
1198.
Wheelock, Arthur. “Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master.” In Jan Lievens: A Dutch MasterRediscovered. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., 15. Exh. cat. Washington, National Gallery of Art;
Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis. New Haven, 2008.
Dickey, Stephanie S. “The Raising of Lazarus” and “Fighting Cardplayers and Death.” In Jan Lievens: ADutch Master Rediscovered. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., 204, 210, under nrs. 73 and 78. Exh. cat.
Washington, National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het
Rembrandthuis. New Haven, 2008.
Hale, Meredith, and Arthur K. Wheelock. “Fighting Cardplayers and Death.” In Jan Lievens: A Dutch
Master Rediscovered. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., 150-151, no. 36.. Exh. cat. Washington,
National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het
Rembrandthuis. New Haven, 2008.
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Schwartz, Gary. Emotions: Pain and Pleasure in Dutch Painting of the Golden Age. Exh. cat. Haarlem,Frans Hals Museum. Rotterdam, 2014, 79. 129, no. 50.
Schnackenburg, Bernhard. Jan Lievens: Friend and Rival of the Young Rembrandt. Petersberg, 2016,
451, no. A10.

Versions
Versions and Copies

1. After Jan Lievens, Fighting Cardplayers and Death, oil on canvas, 68 x 96 cm, location unknown (sale,Sotheby’s, Amsterdam, 22 March 2005, no. 7).

Technical Summary
The painting was executed on a medium weight fabric that has been lined. The current stretcher is slightlylarger than the original composition and remnants of the tacking margins have been opened up and adhered
to the lining fabric on the front of the stretcher. The canvas was prepared with a thin, light-colored groundthat extends onto the tacking margin remnants. Lievens applied the paint smoothly in opaque layers blended
wet-into-wet. There is visible brushwork and impasto in the figures and table in the foreground. Examination
in infrared light at 780 to 1000 mm and pentimenti show that Lievens originally painted a tree to the left of
the window opening and this section of the wall was added later. The painting was not examined with xradiography, but a diagonal line of brushwork through the proper right ear and brown hat of the seated manin the yellow vest does not relate to the current composition, and probably indicates another artist’s change.
The painting appears to be in good condition. The paint has been abraded in a passage along the upper left
corner. Retouching is evident around the eyes of Death, as well as in his proper left shoulder and humerus.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection