BEERSTRATEN, Jan Abrahamsz.
(b. 1622, Amsterdam, d. 1666, Amsterdam)

Mediterranean Harbour, with the Dutch Vessel Profeet Elias at Anchor

1650
Oil on oak panel, 89 x 122 cm
Private collection

The vessel can be identified as the Dutch merchantman the Profeet Elias, or Prophet Elijah. In 1650, the date of the present work, the vessel sailed from Smyrna, then part of the Ottoman Empire, on the Anatolian coast, to Venice,

There is no evidence that Beerstraten ever visited Italy and so the classical and medieval buildings in this composition are probably imaginary, inspired by the work of earlier seventeenth-century Dutch artists such as Bartholomaus Breenburgh and Thomas Wyck.




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