Cornelis (Cornelio) de Wael was born 1592 in Antwerp. With his brother Lucas, who was a year older and who was also a painter, he travelled to Italy in 1610 and around 1613 he settled in Genoa, where he remained until 1657. Before 1620 he was in Venice for a longer period of time, while he spent his last years in Rome, where he died in 1667. There are reports of an impressive funeral which was said to have been attended by about four hundred Flemish artists from the Roman painters’ colony. Cornelis de Wael is a painter of battles, bandits, scenes of torture from the dungeons of the Venetian Doges’ Palace, and also of genre pieces and still lifes. His battles are based on the tradition of the Bassano painters. He was often assisted by his brother Lucas, who was known as a painter of seascapes. The artist’s world is full of fantasy, unrest, horror and despair, in the middle of which the eye rests on a carefully depicted, tranquil and highlighted detail of a garment, a weapon, a ship, the surface of the water. When van Dyck visited Genoa in 1613 he lived at the de Waels’ house for some time, but there is no proof of any artistic collaboration with them. Van Dyck’s double portrait of the de Wael brothers is in the Pinacoteca Capitolina in Rome. Cornelis’ work influenced Alessandro Magnasco, especially his scenes of despair and irony. Cornelis’ paintings and prints are in various Italian, German and Austrian collections, many of them are in public and private collections in Genoa, where frescos of nautical battles have been preserved in the Negrone palace.
Lit.: Maurice Vaes, Corneil de Wael (1592-1667), Bulletin de l'Insitut Historique Belge de Rome, V, 1925, pp. 137-247; La pittura a Genova e in Liguria dal Seicento al primo Novecento, Genova 1971 (chapter P. Torriti, La natura morta e il paesaggio, Text: in 2nd edition 1987 revised by M. C. Galassi); Il tempo di Rubens, Genova 1987, Nr. 6-12 (Text: F. Boggero in F. Simonetti) [ex. cat.]; Piero Donati, Le sette opere di Misericordia di Cornelis de Wael, Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici della Liguria, Banco di Chiavari e della Riviera Ligure, Genova 1988; Seicento, Vol. I-II, 1989, p. 28; Kunst in der Republik Genua: 1528-1815, Schim Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt 1992, pp. 73-75, 627 (Text: Mary Newcome Schleier) [ex. cat.]; De Maere & Wabbes: Illustrated Dictionary, Vol. I and III, Brussels 1994.