Trompe l'oeil. Letter Rack with a Barber-Surgeon's Instruments

The painting is executed in oil on canvas with extremely smooth, almost invisible brushwork designed to deceive the eye into perceiving painted surfaces as actual three-dimensional objects. Strong directional lighting from the upper left creates sharp shadows and highlights the metallic sheen of the basin and helmet. The palette relies heavily on browns, blacks, and muted greens, with the red ribbons and wax seals providing strategic accent. Gijsbrechts renders each material with precise illusionistic detail: the crisp paper of the letters, the soft fabric of the curtain, the polished metal of the instruments, and the worn wood of the rack board. This technical approach aims to collapse the distance between representation and reality, the defining ambition of the trompe l'oeil genre. The handling is more Baroque and fluid than that associated with his son Franciscus, whose works have sometimes been confused with those of his father.

The work was painted in 1668, the year Gijsbrechts arrived in Denmark to serve as court artist. He was engaged by the autocratic King Frederik III from 1668 to 1670, and subsequently by Christian V from 1670 to 1672. During this period he maintained his studio in the Royal Garden by Rosenborg Castle, calling himself court painter from 1670. The bulk of his known output was created during this Copenhagen period, and of the 22 trompe l'oeil paintings he executed there, 19 entered the collection that would become the Statens Museum for Kunst. The painting's current location is the Statens Museum for Kunst, where it is held with the accession number KMS3060. The museum's digital catalogue provides the primary source for its documentation. No specific exhibition history is recorded in the available sources.

Gijsbrechts was a Flemish painter active across the Spanish Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden in the second half of the seventeenth century. Born between 1625 and 1629, probably in Antwerp, he married in 1648 and joined the Guild of St Luke in 1659. His earliest known painting dates to 1657, and he initially produced vanitas still lifes before shifting to trompe l'oeil from the mid-1660s. His appointment at the Danish court placed him within a sophisticated culture of collecting and illusionistic display. The King's Perspective Chamber at Rosenborg Castle, part of the Royal Cabinet of Curiosities, housed 29 paintings including 15 by Gijsbrechts according to a 1690 inventory. Art historian Eva de la Fuente has interpreted this chamber as a symbolic representation of a worldview with the autocratic king at its centre, dominating and understanding the hidden context of things. Gijsbrechts's precise recording of everyday objects, scientific instruments, weapons, and other items makes his paintings valuable historical documents. His name does not appear in contemporary art historical literature, and details of his final years remain unknown.

Approximately 70 works by Gijsbrechts are known, with the Copenhagen period representing his most prolific and significant phase. The concentration of his trompe l'oeil paintings in Danish royal collections, particularly the Statens Museum for Kunst, has ensured their preservation and continued scholarly attention. His works serve as important sources for historians of material culture, given their accurate depiction of seventeenth-century objects, arts and crafts, musical instruments, and scientific equipment. The attribution of certain works has been complicated by the activity of his son Franciscus, who painted similar subjects in a closely related style, though the father's more Baroque and fluid handling is generally distinguishable. The Letter Rack with a Barber-Surgeon's Instruments stands as a representative example of Gijsbrechts's contribution to the trompe l'oeil tradition, demonstrating the genre's capacity to engage viewers through intellectual play and technical virtuosity.