Louis de Caullery

Feast in the Garden of Love, 17th century Antwerp, Louis de Caullery

We have little information on the origins of the artist. He was probably born in Cauery, the town whose name he ended up taking and which is located 18 km from Cambrai. He probably maintained ties with this region. In 1594 he was recruited under the name of "Loys Solleri" as an apprentice of the landscape gardener Joos de Momper. When he became master of the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp in the list of 1602-1603, he registered under the name of "Lowis Callori." Caullery was a prolific painter of genre scenes and mythological paintings. His elegant style is oriented towards late mannerism. His multi-figure compositions have aptly been compared to the work of Frans Francken and other mannerist masters. Small-scale figures are depicted in huge squares, interior scenes or in a landscape with a very large depth of field. His mixture of genre scenes and landscape painting is thoroughly Nordic and even when he introduced mythological and religious themes it was in the manner of a non-heroic genre painter. There are no signs of stylistic evolution in his work. Some paintings are dated but they mainly belong to the end of his career, such as the Allegory of the senses of 1618, at the castle of Nelahozeves in Poland, or another version of the same subject, dated 1620 and on deposit at the Museum of Fine Arts de Cambrai, as well as the Crucifixion of 1619 at the Brussels Museum. Given the large number of works that have come down to us and the repetition of certain compositions, it seems that Caullery directed a large and very active workshop.