page_title: Charles Emmanuel Biset
section_title: Gallery paintings
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Emmanuel Biset / Work / Gallery paintings
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context_page_description: Charles Emmanuel Biset or Karel Emmanuel Biset was a Flemish painter who had a peripatetic career working in various cities and countries including his hometown Mechelen, Paris, Annonay, Brussels, Antwerp and Breda. He worked in many genres including genre scenes of interiors with merry companies and gallery paintings, history painting, still life and portraiture.
context_section_description: Biset worked also in the genre of the 'gallery paintings'.  The 'gallery paintings' genre is native to Antwerp where Frans Francken the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder were the first artists to create paintings of art and curiosity collections in the 1620s. Gallery paintings depict large rooms in which many paintings and other precious items are displayed in elegant surroundings.  The earliest works in this genre depicted art objects together with other items such as scientific instruments or peculiar natural specimens.  The genre became immediately quite popular and was followed by other artists such as Jan Brueghel the Younger, Cornelis de Baellieur, Hans Jordaens, David Teniers the Younger, Gillis van Tilborch and Hieronymus Janssens.  The art galleries depicted were either real galleries or imaginary galleries, sometimes with allegorical figures.
  An example of Biset's work in this genre is the Interior of an Imaginary Picture Gallery (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) dated to 1666.  This composition falls into the category of allegorical picture galleries, which can be considered a sub-category of the imaginary art gallery type. This composition depicts a large imaginary gallery in which are present a number of persons admiring and scrutinizing artworks and, on the right hand side, figures representing gods and allegorical figures. 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 figures are believed to be by Charles Emmanuel Biset. 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). This type of painting can be regarded as a carefully crafted advertisement of the present talent and past legacy of the Antwerp school of painting.
caption: Interior of an Imaginary Picture Gallery
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