Lot 104

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CIRCLE OF JOACHIM WTEWAEL (UTRECHT 1566-1638) AND ALEXANDER KEIRINCX (ANTWERP 1600-1652 AMSTERDAM)

Diana and Callisto

Name: CIRCLE OF JOACHIM WTEWAEL (UTRECHT 1566-1638) AND ALEXANDER KEIRINCX (ANTWERP 1600-1652 AMSTERDAM)
Brand: Diana and Callisto
Price: 22000.00 GBP
Availability: OutOfStock

Estimate

GBP 25,000 - GBP 35,000

Closed: 9 Dec 2022

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CIRCLE OF JOACHIM WTEWAEL (UTRECHT 1566-1638) AND ALEXANDER KEIRINCX (ANTWERP 1600-1652 AMSTERDAM)

Diana and Callisto

Closed: 9 Dec 2022

Details Lot Essay More from

CIRCLE OF JOACHIM WTEWAEL (UTRECHT 1566-1638) AND ALEXANDER KEIRINCX (ANTWERP 1600-1652 AMSTERDAM)
Diana and Callisto
oil on canvas, transferred from panel
19⁵⁄₈ x 27¹⁄₂ in. (50 x 70.2 cm.)

with Victor Spark, New York, 1958-1973, from whom acquired by,
Noah L. Butkin (1918-1980), Cleveland, by whom gifted in 1974 to the following,
The Cleveland Museum of Art, inv. no. 74.106, by whom sold at the following,
Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, New York, 10 June 2011, lot 213, as Follower of Joachim Wtewael.

A.W. Lowenthal, The Paintings of Joachim Anthonisz Wtewael, Ph.D. Thesis, Columbia University, New York, 1975, p. 383, no. C-28, under Copies after Joachim Wtewael.
Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 1978, p. 123, illustrated.
Cleveland Museum of Art, Catalogue of Paintings: Part Three. European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries, Cleveland, 1982, pp. 293-295, no. 131, illustrated.
A. W. Lowenthal, Joachim Wtewael and Dutch Mannerism, Doornspijk, 1986, no. C-36, p. 168, as Wrongly Attributed to Wtewael.
A. Chong, European & American Painting in The Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue, Cleveland, 1993, p. 262, illustrated, as Follower of Wtewael.

Indianapolis, John Herron Art Museum; San Diego, The Fine Arts Gallery, The Young Rembrandt and His Times, 14 February-23 March 1958, no. 93, as Attributed to Joachim Wtewael.
Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Year in Review, March 1975, no. 52.
Grenoble, Couvent Sainte-Cécile; Geneva, Salon du Livre et de la Presse Écrite, La Grimace du Monde, 12 February-4 May 2014.

This lot has been imported from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.
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Lot Essay

The dramatic focus of this finely executed painting is the moment at which the goddess Diana discovers that one of her attendant nymphs, Callisto, is pregnant. The myth, a hugely popular subject with artists both in Antiquity and then again from the sixteenth century, tells that Zeus took on the form of Diana in order to sleep with Callisto. When the subsequent pregnancy was discovered by the goddess herself, she was furious, as her nymphs had all sworn oaths of chastity to her. In some versions of the tale, Diana then transformed Callisto into a bear, in others it was Zeus’s furious wife Hera who met out this punishment. In her animal form, Callisto then lived in the forest, until one day her son, Arcas, almost killed her whilst hunting and Zeus took pity on the former nymph, setting her in the stars as , the Great Bear.

Here the central, pale figure of Diana gestures angrily across her sacred spring to the swooning nymph, supported by two of her companions. However, it is not only to the figures that the viewer must look for the story in this painting. Keirincx, who executed the landscape, integrated an anamorphous bear into the background, alluding to the nymph’s fate. This can be found at upper right, where the two clearings in the trees act as eyes and the channel through which the spring flows the roaring mouth.