Andrea Domenico Remps

Remps was active in Italy during the second half of the seventeenth century, with auction houses and museum sources placing his working life in Venice, Verona, and Florence at different points. His name appears in the literature in several forms, including Andrea Domenico Remps, Domenico Remps, and Andrea Dominico Remps, and at least one surviving work is signed "Domenigo Remps... Venezia." Dealers, museums, and reference databases treat these as variant spellings of a single painter rather than as separate artists.

His birth and death years are usually given as circa 1620 and 1699, but no source consulted for this profile supplies an exact birth date, death date, or place of death. Most modern art-market databases, including Artnet, Wikidata, and MutualArt, describe him simply as Italian. Italian Wikipedia, by contrast, describes him as a Flemish painter active in Italy, so his place of origin remains unsettled.

Remps specialized in trompe l'oeil still life, and in particular in paintings that depict cabinets of curiosities: cupboards and niches crowded with letters, playing cards, prints, shells, and other collected objects rendered with illusionistic precision. His best known work in this vein, generally called Cabinet of Curiosities or Lo Scarabattolo and dated to around 1690, hangs in a museum in Florence, though sources disagree on whether the current custodian is the Museo dell'Opificio delle Pietre Dure or the Galleria Palatina at the Palazzo Pitti. No school, workshop, or master is documented for him, and he is thought to have died around 1699, though no exact date or place of death survives in the sources available for this profile.

No verbatim critical assessment of Remps from a named critic in a major outlet could be confirmed for this profile. His reputation rests almost entirely on the strength of the Cabinet of Curiosities composition, which is regularly cited in surveys of Baroque still life and of the broader European fascination with cabinets of curiosities, and which has been referenced in scholarship on Italian still life painting, including Federico Zeri's La natura morta in Italia. Attribution of individual paintings to Remps, rather than to workshop followers or anonymous imitators, is a recurring theme in auction house and expert catalogue notes.

Remps has a thin, intermittent auction history. The most robust documented result is a pair of trompe l'oeil still lifes, signed "Domenigo Remps... Venezia" and catalogued at auction as Andrea Gottardo Domenico Remps, which sold at Christie's in London on 19 July 2012 for GBP 85,250; a confirmed US dollar equivalent is not available in the sources consulted for this profile. A further trompe l'oeil still life, described in Cabinet Turquin's catalogue notes as offered through Millon in Rambouillet, France, on 20 June 2026, carried an estimate of EUR 6,000 to 12,000, but no confirmed realized price or evidence that the lot sold is available. No gallery or estate currently represents Remps, which is typical for an artist of his period; his works instead move through Old Master auction houses and specialist expertise firms such as Cabinet Turquin, and through private sales handled by houses like Sotheby's.

Remps is a name for specialists rather than a liquid market. There is no catalogue raisonne, no confirmed birth or death date, and no settled account of his nationality or training, so any work offered as by his hand should come with a clear, documented attribution from a recognized expert such as Cabinet Turquin rather than resting on stylistic resemblance alone. Given the small number of public sales, collectors should treat any single auction result, including the 2012 Christie's sale referenced above, as a data point rather than a trend, and should weigh museum comparanda in Florence and documented provenance history more heavily than price history when evaluating a purported Remps.