Jan Van Imschoot

Jan Van Imschoot’s paintings are complex, brimming with references to art history. The artist is as interested in the Flemish Primitives and 17th-century Dutch painters as he is in Goya, Tintoretto, Luc Tuymans and Raoul De Keyser. He himself describes his style as ‘anachro-baroque’. Zita’s late house, a large oil on canvas from 2006, evokes the figure of Saint Zita, the Italian patron saint of domestic servants. The painter had previously depicted the saint’s remains in 1995, then revisited this theme in 2002 through a dozen canvases in the series Recrystallisation of a mental maidenhood. It is said that over the centuries, Zita’s coffin was opened on several occasions and that her mummified body was always found in a perfectly preserved state. It is now on display in its reliquary shrine in the Basilica of San Frediano in Lucca (Tuscany). Whilst the artist previously focused on the motif of the corpse, in *Zita’s late house* he appears to merge the subject into a broader setting, verging on the tragicomic. Anthropomorphic landscapes, floral arrangements and ghostly figures—here that of Johnny Cash on the right—are concealed within the whole.

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