The Oude Voetboog Guild in the Grote Markt
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The Oude Voetboog Guild in the Grote Markt is a 1643 oil-on-canvas painting by David Teniers the Younger, in the collection of the Hermitage Museum, in Saint Petersburg.[1] It is signed and dated bottom left "DAVID. TENIERS. FEC. A 1643".
It was painted for the guild house's main hall. Teniers himself was a member of the guild and Klinge suggests that he painted it as a gift for the guild in return for exemption from guard duty, which was otherwise mandatory for all guild members.[2] The painting was owned by the guild until 1649, when it hit financial difficulties and had to sell both this work and Rubens's The Crowning of the Virtuous Hero to the painter Gerard Hoet.
Both works later became part of the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel's collection, from which they were both looted by Napoleon's troops - Crowning is now back in Kassel's Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. Guild was taken in 1806 and assigned to Napoleon's wife Josephine Beauharnais, who kept it at her Château de Malmaison until 1814, when she sold it with 37 other works to Alexander I of Russia.[3][4] It has been in the Hermitage ever since.[5]
