Ingenuity and Discernment in The Cabinet of Cornelis van der Geest (1628)

Guillam van Haecht the Younger’s The cabinet of Cornelis van der Geest (1628; hereafter The cabinet) is probably the best-known and most extensively analysed example of the seventeenth-century ‘pictures of collections’ genre (fig. 1). Indeed, in her important study of the genre, Picturing Art in Antwerp (1986), Zirka Zaremba Filipczak claimed that ‘no other Flemish representation of the theme of art has been as extensively discussed in art-historical literature’. It is all the more surprising, then, that we lack a full explanation of the picture’s meaning as a didactic commentary on connoisseurship, shown being vigorously practiced by the liefhebbers assembled in the cabinet’s interior. There, in a quasi-fictional gathering of Antwerp’s social and artistic elite, men and women examine pictures and sculptures, pore over globes and instruments, and partake in animated conversation. Their activities are characterised by the motto that presides over the room, inscribed on its entrance portal: ‘Vive L’Esprit’ (fig. 2).ER