Everhard Jabach (1618-1695) was one of the greatest collectors of his time. The masterpieces brought together here illustrate the importance of a man who, not content simply to plead the cause of Northern Art to the king of France and his painters, helped shape the French taste for the Northern schools until the eighteenth century.
A merchant banker from a powerful Cologne family, Jabach moved very early to Paris, where he became a significant force in implementing the economic policy of Colbert, Louis XIV’s Minister of Finances. The sales of his sumptuous collection to Louis XIV in 1662 and 1671 laid the foundations for a true royal collection of paintings and drawings. Although Jabach, like the other great collectors of the time, was interested above all in Italian art, the remarkable quality of his Northern collection—rich in works by Dürer, Holbein, Bril, Van Orley, Rubens, and Van Dyck—deserves our close attention, revealing as it does the uniqueness of a collector who maintained unfailing contact with his country of origin and his native city of Cologne. As a member of vast trading networks extending to London, Amsterdam and Antwerp, he was particularly well placed in terms of channeling to Paris the handsomest examples of the German and Flemish schools that the market had to offer.
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