DAVID TENIERS the Younger, Circumference (Antwerp 1610-1690 Brussels) Adoration of the Shepherds. After Andreas Schiavone (1510/1515- 1563). Oil on wood. 31 × 22.8 cm. Provenance: - Collection Dr Heilgendorff, Berlin. - Heinz Kuckei Collection, Berlin. - By inheritance, European private collection. David Teniers the Younger was already a successful painter when he was appointed court painter to the Governor of the Southern Netherlands in 1651. His new patron was the Habsburg Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, a cousin of King Philip IV of Spain. During the single decade of his governorship (1646-56), Leopold Wilhelm built up one of the largest art collections of his time, and Teniers effectively became its curator. Leopold Wilhelm's collection comprised around 1300 works, including paintings by Hans Holbein (1497-1543), Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1525-1569), Jan Van Eyck (1390-1441), Raphael (1483-1520), Giorgione (1477-1510), Veronese (1528-1588) and more than 15 works by Titian (1488-1576). Today, this extraordinary collection of masterpieces forms the centrepiece of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. In 1660, David Teniers published an illustrated catalogue of 243 of the Archduke's most admired Italian paintings under the title "Theatrum Pictorium", which was the first illustrated printed catalogue of a large collection of paintings. The painting offered here is a copy after Teniers' version of Andreas Schiavone's (1510-1563) painting in the collection of Archduke Leopold (Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, inv. no. Gemäldegalerie, 47) and was probably painted at the same time as Teniers' first version, which is now in the Institut Néerlandais of the Fondation Custodia in Paris (inv. no. 5796, see Margret Klinge: David Teniers the Younger. Paintings, Drawings, exhib. cat. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp 1991, pp. 286-287, cat. no. 99). These objects marked with * (asterisk) are fully subject to VAT, i.e. VAT is charged on the hammer price plus buyer's premium. Buyers who present a legally stamped export declaration will be reimbursed the VAT.