The Lacemaker

The Artist: Eberhart Keilhau, more commonly known as Bernhard Keil but also called Monsù Bernardo (his Italian sobriquet), was born in Helsingør, Denmark, in 1624, the son of a German painter in the service of King Christian IV. In 1642, having trained in Copenhagen under the court painter Morten Steenwinckel, Keil traveled to Amsterdam, spent about two years in the studio of Rembrandt and then set up his own workshop. In 1651 he abandoned Holland for Italy, working first in the north (Venice, Bergamo, Milan, Ravenna, and Ferrara) and finally settling in Rome in 1656, where he spent the rest of his career and died in 1687. His early association with Rembrandt appears to have left little trace; instead, his style is more strongly connected with artists of his adopted homeland, such as Bernardo Strozzi and Domenico Fetti. Besides his work on ecclesiastical commissions and portraits, Keil was a prolific painter of genre scenes, of which The Met's canvas is a typical example.

The Picture: In this painting, a girl in a yellow dress and blue apron, seated on a low wooden stool, pauses from her knitting to reach into a basket of yarn. A ball of yarn has dropped out of the basket, and the cat at the right stares eagerly at the loose threads in girl’s lap. Between them, set on a small wicker chair, is a lacemaking pillow pinned with an unfinished strip of lace and hung with bobbins, which suggests that the girl was occupied with the lace before turning to her knitting. The nondescript setting opens to a view of clouds at the upper right. An attribution to Keil was first proposed by Roberto Longhi in 1938 and has been affirmed in later scholarship (Longhi 1938, p. 127; Heimbürger 1988, no. 170). Although the picture is neither signed nor dated, the paint handling, palette, figure type, and subject matter are fully consistent with secured works by the artist. It probably belongs to his Roman period, thus after 1656.

Many of Keil’s genre subjects are thought to carry double meanings. Given the acute visual attention required by needlework, knitting, and lacemaking, the artist’s many depictions of those activities have been interpreted as allegories of sight, and some canvases appear to have belonged to larger ensembles representing the five senses (Heimbürger 1988, pp. 117–22). Such is the case with a putatively somewhat earlier group of same-size genre scenes that correspond to the senses of taste, touch, sight, hearing, and smell (Heimbürger 1988, nos. 68–76, 78). In The Met's picture, for which companion pieces are not yet known, sight is represented as much by the watchful cat as it is by the girl’s labor. Also, the tense expectation that the animal is about to pounce on the girl’s yarn adds to the appeal of the subject.

A repetition of the present work, possibly an autograph replica (a practice familiar from other examples in Keil’s oeuvre), is in private ownership. Keil also used the same seated girl, including the basket and the ball of yarn to the left, in his larger, multi-figure Children’s School in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (see Heimbürger 1988, no. 169, ill., and remarks under no. 170). A lost sketch probably served as the common source for both compositions. Paintings like these were important to the subsequent development of genre painting in Italy. The often repeated Children’s School and Sewing School themes were Keil’s invention, and their considerable influence is felt, for example, in the work of Giacomo Ceruti (1698–1767), as in the latter’s Women Working on Pillow Lace (The Sewing School) of the 1720s (private collection, Brescia).

Joshua P. Waterman 2013

baron Lazzaroni, Paris (in 1928; as by Antonio Amorosi); [Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell, Paris, before 1938]; [Duveen, New York, by 1952–63; as by Antonio Amorosi, later as by Keil; transferred to Fowles, partner in the firm]; Edward Fowles, New York (1963–d. 1971; as by Keil)

Roberto Longhi. Letter to Baron Lazzaroni. April 19, 1928, attributes it to Antonio Amorosi (Italian, 1660–1738) and dates it to the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Roberto Longhi. "Monsù Bernardo." Critica d'arte 3 (August–December 1938), p. 127, fig. 19, attributes it to Monsù Bernardo [Bernhard Keil]; as formerly with Dowdeswell, Paris.

Minna Heimbürger. Bernardo Keilhau detto Monsù Bernardo. Rome, 1988, p. 238, no. 170, ill., dates it to probably the same time as the large "Children's School" (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), which includes the same figure seen here; however, notes that it is not a preliminary study but rather an independent work; refers to it as a "double entendre" composition that is actually an allegory of sight; gives slightly different provenance information.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 230, ill.