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Jupiter seducing Callisto:
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Entry details

Full title
Jupiter seducing Callisto
Artist
Andrea Schiavone
Inventory number
NG1884
Author
Sir Nicholas Penny

Catalogue entry

, 2008

Extracted from:
Nicholas Penny, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume II: Venice 1540–1600 (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2008).

© The National Gallery, London

© The National Gallery, London

NG 1884
Jupiter seducing Callisto

Oil on canvas, 18.7 × 18.9 cm

NG 1883
Arcas Hunting

Oil on canvas, 18.8 × 18.4 cm

[page 117][page 118]

Support

The dimensions given above are those of the stretchers. The maximum measurements of the original painted area of both pictures are 17.2 × 17.6 cm. The original canvas is of a fine tabby weave which has been lined on to a heavier canvas of the same type. There is no evident cusping. The edges of the original canvas are partly concealed with putty. The stretchers are of pine and both have a horizontal crossbar. Paper labels marked with the loan numbers (114a and 114b) given to the paintings when they were in the National Gallery of Ireland are affixed to the stretchers. Since the paintings originally decorated the sides of a chest, the canvases were probably glued to thin panels. As discussed below under Previous Owners, they may still have been on panels in the eighteenth century. The vestiges of a wax seal are apparent on the back of NG 1884.

Materials and Technique

Samples taken from both paintings in July 1957 revealed no evidence of a gesso ground, but there is a layer of yellow‐brown priming consisting of iron oxide with a little lead white, applied directly to the canvas. The blue of the sky consists of azurite and lead white, and the flesh of lead white with an unusually crimson vermilion.1

Very fine threads of shell gold are employed in the archer’s hair, bow, arrow and quiver in NG 1883, and in Jupiter’s cloak and the clouds in NG 1884. Under magnification it is apparent that ‘scraps of gold leaf were laid over still soft underpaint of parts of the foliage and then glazed’.2 A fingerprint in the red lake in the cloak in NG 1884 reveals that surplus paint was blotted with the fingers.

Conservation

The paintings were cleaned and restored between February 1996 and June 1997. There is no record of any earlier treatment in the Gallery, and the thick varnish removed on that occasion was probably applied before 1860.

Condition

The copper‐green glazes in the foliage have darkened. The lake glazes in Jupiter’s drapery in NG 1884 have probably faded, so that only the darkest shadows are clearly defined. The colour of the cloak now appears lilac, whereas it was probably originally more purple. There are numerous pin‐sized losses on both paintings, and some small chips of paint are missing, notably from the shoulder of the nymph in NG 1883 and from the legs of both the figures in NG 1884.

The Companion Painting and the Subjects

The two paintings were correctly associated by Richardson in 1980 with a larger one of nearly identical height (19 × 49 cm) of Diana and Callisto (or, more accurately, the ‘Discovery of the Pregnancy of Callisto by the Nymphs of Diana’) in the Musée de Picardie, Amiens (fig. 1).3 The three paintings were assembled together in the exhibition Denon: l’Œil de Napoléon in 2000. It was obvious that they had been made as an ensemble,4 with the two square canvases presumably decorating the ends of a chest and the horizontal canvas decorating its front.

The subjects of NG 1883 and 1884 had simply been identified as ‘mythological scenes’ by Gould.5 Richardson retained these general titles, but they must be presumed to depict other episodes in the story of Callisto, as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

The nymph Callisto, a favourite of Diana, attracted the attention of Jupiter. When resting in a grove she heard a god greet her and believed that she was in the presence of Diana, whom she addressed as ‘divinity’ (‘salve numen’) and as ‘greater in my eyes than Jupiter himself’.6 But it was in fact Jupiter himself, disguised as Diana, and Schiavone has, it seems, depicted in NG 1884 the moment when this becomes [page 119]apparent to Callisto. The nymph’s knees bend in a curtsey or a faint, her right hand pressed against her thigh (a detail that was not visible before cleaning). Although she struggles, she is unable to resist, and her fellow nymphs reveal her pregnancy to Diana.

Fig. 1

Andrea Schiavone, Diana and Callisto, c.1550. Oil on canvas, 19 × 49 cm. Amiens, Musée de Picardie. © Musée de Picardie, Amiens.

The archer in NG 1883 has been supposed to be the god Apollo,7 but he has no part in this story. In 1999 I proposed that the figure might represent Callisto herself,8 depicted as she was when she first caught Jupiter’s eye, hunting in Arcadia: ‘This lass was not one for spending hours spinning soft threads of wool or coiling her hair in varied styles. She was one of Diana’s warriors, wearing her tunic pinned by a brooch, her tresses carelessly tied back by a white ribbon, and carrying in her hand a light javelin or her bow.’9 There are, however, good reasons to doubt this. First, she is not dressed in the same way as Callisto in the other two episodes. Secondly, if the paintings were placed on the right side of the chest (which would be essential for compositional reasons) the sequence would not be chronological. Carol Plazzotta, for these and other reasons, proposed (in April 2006) that the archer was intended as Arcas, Callisto’s son by Jupiter. When the pregnancy of Callisto was revealed to Diana (the episode on the front of the chest) the goddess turned her into a bear. Arcas grew up to be a keen hunter and killed a bear without knowing that it was his own mother. Plazzotta’s interpretation is confirmed by slight traces of an animal with a snout in the foliage to the left of the painting (previously supposed to be a wild boar) and, indeed, had there not been some special significance in the prey to be seen there, the artist would not have placed the archer so far to one side.

Attribution

The paintings were attributed to Schiavone when they were in the Algarotti, Denon and Beaucousin collections, and when acquired by the National Gallery, and it is unlikely that they had ever been supposed to be by anyone else. In his catalogue of 1959 Cecil Gould wrote that they were ‘by or after Andrea Schiavone’ but added that their ‘present condition precludes a decision between these alternatives’ – his hesitation, even his phraseology, reflecting the influence of Martin Davies.10 Richardson regarded this formula (which Gould preserved in his catalogue of 1975) as ‘overcautious’. His claim that the paintings were ‘not seriously damaged’ and ‘surely autograph’ was fully vindicated by the cleaning in 1996.11

Visual Sources and Dating

Callisto’s pose, her profile and her pearl‐sown coiffure in NG 1884 recall Psyche in Schiavone’s painting of Cupid and Psyche in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.12 The archer in NG 1883 is reminiscent of a figure in one of Schiavone’s etchings, especially in the way his drapery billows across his legs and his hair streams backward in the wind.13 These observations, made by Richardson, do not help us to date the works, nor can we be sure which came first. But if, as seems reasonable, we assume that the Diana and Callisto in Amiens is of the same date then we can be fairly certain that the paintings were made after 1548, because that is the date of an engraving by Vico after Parmigianino which was, as Richardson also remarked, surely Schiavone’s inspiration for the imperious pose of Diana (a pose he also borrowed for his own etching of Persephone).14 The pointing gesture is close to that used by Titian in his painting of the same subject in 1559 but Titian may have taken this idea from Schiavone, as he did other ideas.15 A date around 1550 seems consistent with Schiavone’s development.

Previous Owners

An ‘Apollo in un bosco che faetta’ and a pendant (‘suo simile’) showing ‘un vecchio che tiene abbracciata una giovine’, of the same size, approximately, as NG 1883 and 1884, were published in about 1779 in the catalogue of the collection of Count Francesco Algarotti (1712–1764),16 the cosmopolitan connoisseur, author and arbiter elegantiarum who had acted, in the early 1740s, as art agent for Frederick‐Augustus II, Elector of Saxony, and, in the later 1740s and early 1750s, as adviser to Frederick the Great, by whom he was ennobled. Algarotti may have obtained the paintings in his native Venice, when he lived there in 1743–5 or again in 1759–64, but in any case he maintained contact with the city, and some of the two hundred or so pictures that he owned when he died had been acquired by his father and his brother Bonomo (d. 1776). Bonomo’s daughter, the Contessa Maria Algarotti Corniani, found the catalogue after his death.17 It is interesting that Algarotti purchased for Dresden one of Schiavone’s most ambitious paintings.18

The catalogue of Algarotti’s collection describes all three small paintings as ‘in tavola’. A possible explanation for this is that the canvases were glued to panels – indeed they were probably made that way, because canvas pictures, when fitted into furniture, were not likely to be on stretchers. NG 1883 and 1884 were regarded as pendants. Diana and Callisto was listed next, but as a pendant to another work by Schiavone, The Queen of Sheba before Solomon. In all, there were seven paintings by Schiavone in the collection, making him and Carpioni the artists best represented there, after Tiepolo.

The two little paintings are next recorded in 1793, in a letter sent by Dominique‐Vivant Denon to a friend, which lists a few pictures that he wished to be sent from Venice to Paris.19 Vivant Denon (1747–1825) began to collect art while serving as a diplomat in Italy. He was himself an accomplished draughtsman and printmaker with a keen interest in archaeology. He is likely to have acquired the paintings between October 1788 and July 1793, when he was living in Venice. It has been suggested that he obtained them from Anton Maria Zanetti the Elder (1679–1767),20 because we know (see the section below on Prints) that Zanetti projected a woodcut of the archer in NG 1883 and that Denon acquired Zanetti’s great collection of drawings from his nephews in 1791.21 Zanetti himself had died well before the publication of Algarotti’s collection, so it is much more likely that Denon bought the paintings from Algarotti’s heirs.

After he had organised the publication of Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte in 1802, Denon’s wide knowledge, his diplomatic skill and his ability as an administrator were [page 120]given official recognition when he was appointed Director General of Museums. The Musée Napoléon was in large part his creation, and after the Battle of Waterloo he refused to cooperate in the restitution of works of art to Italy and Germany. He was also director of the mint and of the factories of Sèvres and Gobelins, and directed much of the official patronage of Napoleon, from medals and coins to history paintings and triumphal arches.22 After the Restoration he retired from public life and devoted himself to compiling a history of world art, based on his own collection. In the posthumous inventory of his possessions at 5 (modern 7) Quai Voltaire, Paris, made between 16 and 26 May 1825, the two Schiavones are recorded as hanging in his bedroom.23

Fig. 2

Antonio Belemo, Callisto Hunting, 1760s. Woodcut, 16.4 × 11.2 cm. London, The British Museum. © Copyright The Trustees of The British Museum.

In 1793 and again in 1825 the paintings were associated with Diana and Callisto, which, as noted above, had also been in the Algarotti collection, where, however, the three pictures seem not to have been recognised as a group. They were offered together as a single lot (no. 43) at the sale of Denon’s paintings and drawings in May 1826. According to the annotated version of the catalogue in the Bibliothèque Centrale des Musées Nationaux, they were purchased by the artist and dealer Laurent Durand Duclos for 810 francs.24 However, a well‐informed publication of 1829 stated that the Diana and Callisto remained in the possession of Denon’s nephews.25

NG 1883 and 1884 are next recorded, without the Diana and Callisto, in another Parisian collection, that formed by Edmond Beaucousin (1806–1866) and kept in his second‐storey apartment at 16 Boulevard Montmartre, together with a choice collection of ivories, bronzes and enamels.26 Forty‐two of Beaucousin’s paintings, almost all of them of the late fifteenth or sixteenth century, were bought by Eastlake for the National Gallery for £9,205 3s. 1d. (230,000 francs) on 27 January 1860.27 Beaucousin’s chief supplier seems to have been the London‐based dealer Chrétien‐Jean Nieuwenhuys, who was, it seems, disappointed that his client was selling and therefore no longer collecting. Nieuwenhuys not only refused to supply Eastlake with information concerning the provenances but disparaged some of the pictures he himself had sold. Beaucousin was distressed. He had handled the affair with ‘délicatesse de conscience’ (‘tact and consideration’). He could understand that Nieuwenhuys was ‘contrarié’ by the sale, but such behaviour was uncalled for: ‘Enfin, le cœur humain a ses faiblesses …’ (‘after all at heart we are all flawed’), he lamented in a letter to Lady Eastlake.28

By 21 May, Eastlake had put aside eleven of Beaucousin’s paintings as unsuited for display in the Gallery, and he explained to the Treasury on that date that he preferred to transfer these to other public collections rather than sell them at auction. NG 1883 and 1884 were among the six dispatched on loan to Dublin on 18 June.29 Thus Eastlake, one of the finest connoisseurs in Europe, discarded paintings which had been treasured by Algarotti and Denon. He cannot have been insensitive to the colour, movement and pattern (like a butterfly taking flight) in NG 1884 or the nervous and witty drawing in NG 1883, but perhaps he felt that the voluptuous content was inappropriate for a public collection. This was a problem with two other, more prominent paintings in the Beaucousin collection: Bronzino’s Allegory with Venus and Cupid (NG 651), which in consequence was partly repainted, and Garofalo’s Allegory of Love (NG 1362), which was dispatched to the National Gallery of Scotland.30

Provenance

See above. Published in the posthumous catalogue of Francesco Algarotti’s collection, 1776. Recorded in the possession of Vivant Denon in 1793 and in his posthumous sale in May 1826. Bought at the latter sale by Laurent Durand Duclos. Purchased by the National Gallery from the collection of Edmond Beaucousin in 1860 and lent to the National Gallery of Ireland in the same year. Returned to the National Gallery on 29 March 1926.

Prints

In the catalogue of Algarotti’s collection it is noted that Zanetti made a print after NG 1883. This must in fact record his intention to do so. An impression of the woodcut by Antonio Belemo (active by 1756, d. 1791; fig. 2) is inscribed as having been drawn on the woodblock by Zanetti before his death. Another impression is inscribed with the information that the woodblock had passed to Francesco Novelli (d. 1836), who had commissioned the cutting of the design [page 121]from Belemo.31 Since Novelli was a pupil of Denon in Venice, as we know from the records of the State Inquisitors,32 it is likely that Denon was involved. If so, it is curious that the woodcut so prominently declares itself as an invention of Parmigianino. This is probably an error on the part of Belemo but perhaps reflects the recognition by Zanetti that Schiavone’s source was Parmigianino (see Visual Sources above). The diagonal trunk of a fallen tree is more distinct in the print than it now is in the painting but the bear in the wood was presumably already hard to see, or at least regarded as irrelevant, and the archer now occupies the centre of the composition.

Richard Ford (1796–1858), the collector, connoisseur and traveller who owned one of the impressions of Belemo’s print, also etched a copy of it. Denon may have intended to include lithographs of both NG 1883 and NG 1884 in his encyclopaedic anthology illustrating the evolution of the figurative arts, begun in 1816. The Monuments des Arts du Dessin, when it was eventually published in 1829, included a lithograph of Diana and Callisto by Gounod.33 There is a proof lithograph of NG 1884, probably intended for this publication, in a private collection.34

Between 1860 and 1996 the two paintings were exhibited in gilt frames with press‐moulded composition ornament consisting chiefly of a double line of fluting on the broad outer moulding. The same pattern of frame is recorded on some other small pictures in the Gallery: NG 1887, NG 1888, NG 1304 and NG 652. Despite the misleading numbers, these paintings were all part of the Beaucousin collection acquired en bloc in 1860. It is possible that the frame was a standard one given to the paintings by the Gallery’s framer at that date but, since examples have been found on no other paintings in the Gallery, and different patterns are known to have then been employed by the Gallery for small paintings, it is more likely that the type of frame was one that Beaucousin had favoured. Since his collection had been formed relatively recently, the condition of Beaucousin’s frames was likely to have been acceptable and, even if the style had not been much liked, the Gallery could not easily have justified the expense of reframing, as these paintings were all sent out on loan. The example illustrated in fig. 3 is the frame that remains on NG 652 (Charity, formerly attributed to Francesco Salviati, now attributed to Michele di [page 122]Ridolfo Tosini) because it is the best preserved, although it is the only one with a frieze decorated with concentric squares. The inspiration for these frames must have been a Tuscan frame of the mid‐sixteenth century such as the carved walnut mirror frame in the Lehman collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.35

Fig. 3

Michele di Ridolfo Tosini, Charity, in its frame of c. 1850. Oil on wood, 24.5 × 17.8 cm. London, The National Gallery (NG 652). © The National Gallery, London.

After cleaning in 1997 the two paintings were reframed in parcel‐gilt walnut mouldings made by the London firm of Paul Mitchell. These were replicas of an architectural profile frame in Mr Mitchell’s possession and were designed to recall the furniture into which the paintings would originally have been inserted.

Notes

1. Report of July 1957 signed by R.J.P. (Joyce Plesters). (Back to text.)

2. Treatment Report by Jill Dunkerton. (Back to text.)

3. Richardson 1980, p. 152, no. 244, and pp. 165–6, nos 272–3; figs 107–9. (Back to text.)

4. Dupuy 2000, p. 440. Exactly the same use of gold and a similar linear application of white impasto was apparent in all three paintings, but it is curious that Callisto’s dress is not of quite the same colours in the Amiens picture as in NG 1884 – the white has some blue in it and the yellow is slightly more green. (Back to text.)

5. Gould 1959, p. 75; 1975, p. 240. (Back to text.)

6. Metamorphoses, II, 405–95; this passage 425–31. (Back to text.)

8. Massar 2005 has captions for figs 175 and 176 that commence ‘here interpreted’, which would encourage readers to suppose that the identification of the figures as Callisto Hunting and Callisto embraced by Jupiter were hers, especially since she claims (on p. 434) that the paintings are still officially titled as ‘mythological figures’. But see Dunkerton, Foister and Penny 1999, p. 130, and captions on p. 131, and, in addition, Dupuy 2000, p. 440. (Back to text.)

9. Metamorphoses, II, 405–15. (Back to text.)

10. Gould 1959, p. 75; 1975, p. 241. (Back to text.)

11. Richardson 1980, pp. 165–6. (Back to text.)

12. Ibid. , pp. 168–9, no. 280, fig. 110. (Back to text.)

13. Ibid. , pp. 104–5, no. 126, fig. 126. Massar (2005) points out that the pose also owes something to Parmigianino’s drawing of Ganymede seen from the rear (Popham 1971, no. 512, in the Louvre), which Schiavone copied in an etching (Zerner 1979, p. 101, no. 74). (Back to text.)

14. Richardson 1980, p. 104, no. 124, fig. 106 – also pp. 37–8. (Back to text.)

15. Ibid. , p. 165; for the Titian see Brigstocke 1993, pp. 183–6. (Back to text.)

16. Selva and Edwards [ 1776 1779 ], p. xxi. The measurements, given to French standards, are six and a half oncie square. The catalogue was published in Italian, French and German editions. Of these only the third has either a place or a date of publication (Augsburg 1780). The Italian and French editions are likely to be slightly earlier and, despite the French measurements, the text is likely to have been in Italian originally. I owe all this information to Burton Fredericksen. (Back to text.)

17. For Algarotti in general see Haskell 1963, chapter 14. See also Haskell 1980, pp. 409–10, for additional bibliography. (Back to text.)

18. The Infancy of Jupiter is now in the collection of the Earl of Wemyss and March at Gosford. The painting was published by Humfrey in Humfrey et al. 2004, p. 163, no. 56. Anderson 2005, pp. 281–2, recognised it as the painting Algarotti bought in 1743 from the Cornaro family. (Back to text.)

19. Dupuy 2000, p. 440 (citing Lettres à Bettine). (Back to text.)

20. Ibid. , as a speculation, repeated in Massar 2005, p. 437, as a fact. (Back to text.)

21. Dupuy 2000, p. 452 and p. 498 (third column). (Back to text.)

22. Dupuy 2000 covers every aspect of his career. For his collection of paintings see pp. 437–9 (essay by Dupuy). (Back to text.)

23. Dupuy 2000, p. 440. (Back to text.)

24. Dupuy 2000, pp. 399–400, for the sale in general and the catalogue of his entire collection published in three volumes, and p. 440 for the price and the purchaser. (Back to text.)

25. Duval 1829, II, pl. 136. (Back to text.)

26. Carol Plazzotta suggests that if the three paintings did all belong to Beaucousin then it may not be a coincidence that Diana and Callisto is now in Amiens, which was his native city. Beaucousin had no profession and was registered as a ‘rentier’. This fact together with his address I owe to a letter written to Lorne Campbell by Theodore Reff on 14 August 1996. For the ivories etc. see Hédouin 1847, p. 272. (Back to text.)

27. The Trustees agreed on 23 January. 27 January is the date of Beaucousin’s receipt. The receipt listed 46 pictures but the Gallery listed 42. Robertson 1978, p. 190 (especially note 27) and pp. 309–11. (Back to text.)

28. Letter of 19 February 1860 in the Victoria and Albert Museum, MSS‐English, 86.M.39, quoted by Robertson 1978, p. 191. Nieuwenhuys (1799–1883) was a highly successful London dealer who worked in partnership with his father, Lambert‐Jean Nieuwenhuys (1777–1862) of Brussels. He sold to the National Gallery in June 1825 Correggio’s Madonna of the Basket, which his father had bought in Paris in April of that year (Nieuwenhuys 1834, p. 49). They were in a strong position to help form the art collection of Willem II, King of the Netherlands (Hinterding and Horsch 1989, p. 9 and note 17), as they were considered experts in Dutch and Flemish art (pioneers in the rediscovery’ of Hals, for example – see Nieuwenhuys 1834, p. 131) and in earlier Netherlandish painting, which was well represented in Beaucousin’s collection. It is not unlikely that Nieuwenhuys also felt that if his client wanted to sell he should do so through him. (Back to text.)

29. Letter of 21 May 1860 (NG 5/313/2), cited by Robertson 1978, p. 191, note 29. (Back to text.)

30. Robertson 1978, pp. 191–2. (Back to text.)

32. Dupuy 2000, p. 498. (Back to text.)

33. Duval 1829, II, pl. 136. (Back to text.)

34. Information from Marie‐Anne Dupuy. (Back to text.)

35. Newbery, Bisacca and Kanter 1990, pp. 64–5, no. 35. (Back to text.)

[page 123]
Fig. 4

Enlarged detail of NG 1883. © The National Gallery, London

List of archive references cited

  • London, Victoria and Albert Museum, MSS‐English, 86.M.39: Edmond Beaucousin, letter to Lady Eastlake, 19 February 1860

List of references cited

Anderson 2005
AndersonJaynie, ‘Count Francesco Algarotti as an advisor to Dresden’, in Il collezionismo a Venezia e nel Veneto ai tempi della SerenissimaBernard AikemaRosella Lauber and Max Seidel (papers given at a convegno at the Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence, in 2003), Venice 2005, 275–86
Avery‐Quash 2011b
Avery‐QuashSusanna, ed., ‘The Travel Notebooks of Sir Charles Lock Eastlake’, The Walpole Society2 vols, centenary edition, 2011, 73
Brigstocke 1993
BrigstockeHughItalian and Spanish Paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland, 2nd edn, Edinburgh 1993
Denon 1802
DenonDominique‐VivantVoyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte, 1802
Dunkerton, Foister and Penny 1999
DunkertonJillSusan Foister and Nicholas PennyDürer to Veronese: Sixteenth‐Century Paintings in the National GalleryNew Haven and London 1999
Dupuy 2000
DupuyMarie‐Anne, ed., Dominique‐Vivant Denon: L’œil de Napoléon (exh. cat. Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1999–2000), Paris 2000
Duval 1829
DuvalAmauryMonuments des Arts du dessin chez les peuples tant anciens que modernes, recueillis par le Baron Vivant Denon4 volsParis 1829
Gould 1959
GouldCecilNational Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth‐Century Venetian SchoolLondon 1959
Gould 1975
GouldCecilNational Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth‐Century Italian SchoolsLondon 1975 (repr., 1987)
Haskell 1963
HaskellFrancisPatrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the BaroqueLondon 1963 (revised, London and New Haven 1980)
Hédouin 1847
HédouinPierre, ‘Memling: étude sur la vie et les ouvrages de ce peintre, suivie du catalogue de ses tableaux’, Annales archéologiques, 1847, VI256–78
Hinterding and Horsch 1989
HinterdingErik and Femy Horsch, ‘“A small but choice collection”: The Art Gallery of King Willem II of the Netherlands (1792–1849)’, Simiolus, 1989, IX5–122
Humfrey 2004
HumfreyPeterTimothy CliffordAidan Weston‐Lewis and Michael BuryThe Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections (exh. cat. National Galleries of Scotland, 2004), Edinburgh 2004
Joannides and Dunkerton 2007
JoannidesPaul and Jill Dunkerton, ‘“A Boy with a Bird” in the National Gallery: Two Responses to a Titian Question’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 2007, 2836–57
Massar 2005
MassarPhyllis D., ‘A Woodcut by Antonio Belemo’, Print Quarterly, December 2005, XXII
Newbery, Bisacca and Kanter 1990
NewberyTimothy J.George Bisacca and Laurence B. KanterItalian Renaissance Frames (exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990), New York 1990
Nieuwenhuys 1834
NieuwenhuysChristian JeanA Review of the Lives and Works of some of the most Eminent PaintersLondon 1834
Ovid, Metamorphoses / 1966
OvidMetamorphosestrans. by F.J. Miller2 volsLoeb Classical LibraryLondon 1916 (reprint, Harvard 1966)
Penny 1998
PennyNicholas, ‘Un’introduzione ai taccuini di Sir Charles Eastlake’, in Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle: Conoscitore e conservatore, ed. Anna Chiara Tommasi (papers from the Convegno held in 1997 at Legnago, Verona), Venice 1998, 277–89
Penny 2004
PennyNicholasNational Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth‐Century Italian Paintings, Volume I, Paintings from Bergamo, Brescia and CremonaLondon 2004
Popham 1971
PophamArthur E.Catalogue of the Drawings of Parmigianino3 volsNew Haven and London 1971
Richardson 1980
RichardsonFrancis L.Andrea SchiavoneOxford 1980
Robertson 1978
RobertsonDavidSir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art WorldPrinceton 1978
Selva and Edwards 1779
[SelvaGiovanni Antonio] and [Pietro Edwards], Catalogo dei quadri, dei disegni e dei libri che trattano dell’arte del disegno della galleria del fu sig. Conte Algarotti in VeneziaVenice about 1779 (not before 1777)
Simon 2007
SimonJacobBritish Picture Framemakers 1600–1950 (National Portrait Gallery online dictionary), https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/research/programmes/conservation/directory-of-british-framemakers/, accessed 21 May 2024, 1st edn, 2007
Zerner 1979
ZernerHenri, ed., Italian Artists of the Sixteenth CenturyThe Illustrated BartschXXXIII (formerly 16, ii)New York 1979

The Organisation of the Catalogue

Artists are listed alphabetically and separate works by the same artists are ordered chronologically (rather than by date of accession). The division of an artist’s work between catalogues has been avoided in the past, but Titian presents a special problem. His work from before 1540 has been left for another volume and his later productions are presented here together with works by rivals, followers, pupils and imitators.

I have included one painting which seems to be a pastiche made soon after Titian’s death (A Concert, NG 3) and another which is a copy of one of his compositions, probably made later than 1600 (The Trinity, NG 4222), but not A Boy with a Bird (NG 933), which has often been taken for a seventeenth‐century imitation of Titian. The light cloud of drapery around the upper arm and the outlining of the fingers recall Titian’s Noli me tangere (NG 270) of c. 1515. It may be an excerpt from a painting of Venus and Adonis, a composition discussed in this catalogue (pp. 274–91), but if so must, as Paul Joannides has proposed, be an early version. Arguments in favour of the autograph status of this curious morsel are presented by Joannides and Jill Dunkerton in volume 28 of the National Gallery Technical Bulletin.

A good case could easily be made for including works by Rottenhammer, Elsheimer and El Greco, all of whom painted in Venice and were formed, or at least reformed, as artists by that experience. But readers will expect to find their work in other catalogues and it is unlikely that my colleagues would have consented to their appropriation. It may therefore seem inconsistent to have included The Conversion of Mary Magdalene (NG 1241) which is probably by Pedro Campaña, who was Netherlandish by birth and worked for many years in Spain. He was probably only briefly resident in Venice, but this painting was commissioned by a Venetian patrician both as a record of his family and as a record of a fresco in a Venetian church, so it seemed wrong to omit it.

As in the first volume of the sixteenth‐century Italian paintings, the entries, which are more discursive than was formerly the case in the Gallery’s catalogues, have been divided into sections with titles intended to help readers select the topic that interests them. Much material concerning previous owners is supplied and much on the circumstances of the work’s acquisition, but a succinct, factual summary of provenance is also supplied separately for ease of consultation.

The information on picture frames provided in the first volume attracted more comment in print than any other feature of that book. Here I have also drawn attention both to old frames of distinction and to frames made for the National Gallery. The reader should note that Jacob Simon at the National Portrait Gallery has created an online directory of framemakers which includes all the craftsmen mentioned here as employed by, or as suppliers to, the National Gallery.

An account of the conservators employed by the Gallery to varnish, line, clean, repair and retouch before the establishment of the Gallery’s own Conservation Department is incorporated in the introduction to the first volume (Penny 2004, pp. xiv–xv). A great deal of information about the conservation of the National Gallery’s paintings is provided and I have tried to relate the conservation history to the provenance, identifying not only nineteenth‐century restorers but also, sometimes, those from earlier centuries.

A question‐mark is used to indicate a doubt as to the authorship of a painting in preference to the formula of ‘Attributed to’ or ‘Ascribed to’. Comprehensive listing of references made in recent art‐historical literature has not been attempted. References in the notes are abbreviations of entries in the bibliography. I have tried to identify the actual authors of exhibition catalogues and of anonymous guides.

A Note on Manuscript Material Cited

References are made in the notes to manuscript material (chiefly letters) studied in British family papers – for example, those of the Earls of Carlisle and of the Dukes of Hamilton – and also to material studied in public and church archives in Venice – for example, confraternity manuscripts in the care of the parish of S. Trovaso, the parish records kept in S. Silvestro, and wills, inventories and financial records in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (here abbreviated to ASV). Most frequent reference, however, is made to the Archive of the National Gallery itself: the minutes of the meetings of the Board of Trustees, with the associated papers, the Gallery accounts, the diary and other papers of Ralph Nicholson Wornum, and above all the notebooks or travel diaries kept by Sir Charles Eastlake on his continental tours between 1852 and 1864 (there is also one for 1830). Since there is more than one notebook for each annual tour, the number of the notebook cited is given in parentheses – thus ‘MS notebook 1864 (2)’ for the second in 1864. I have published an account of Eastlake’s methods and motives for compiling these notebooks in ‘Un’introduzione ai taccuini di Sir Charles Eastlake’ in Anna Chiara Tommasi, ed., Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle: Conoscitore e conservatore (papers from the Convegno held in 1997 at Legnago, Verona), Venice 1998, pp. 277–89. They are currently being transcribed and edited by Susanna Avery‐Quash for publication by the Walpole Society.

About this version

Version 1, generated from files NP_2008__16.xml dated 06/03/2025 and database__16.xml dated 09/03/2025 using stylesheet 16_teiToHtml_externalDb.xsl dated 03/01/2025. Structural mark-up applied to skeleton document in full; entry for NG294 reintegrated into main document; entries for NG16, NG26, NG224, NG277, NG674, NG1318 & NG1324-NG1326, NG1883-NG1884, NG3948, NG4452, NG6376, NG6420 and NG6490 prepared for publication; entries for NG16, NG26, NG224, NG277, NG294, NG674, NG1318 & NG1324-NG1326, NG1883-NG1884, NG3948, NG4452, NG6376, NG6420 and NG6490 proofread and corrected.

Cite this entry

Permalink (this version)
https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E9R-000B-0000-0000
Permalink (latest version)
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Chicago style
Penny, Nicholas. “NG 1884, Jupiter seducing Callisto, NG 1883, Arcas Hunting”. 2008, online version 1, March 9, 2025. https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E9R-000B-0000-0000.
Harvard style
Penny, Nicholas (2008) NG 1884, Jupiter seducing Callisto, NG 1883, Arcas Hunting. Online version 1, London: National Gallery, 2025. Available at: https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E9R-000B-0000-0000 (Accessed: 19 March 2025).
MHRA style
Penny, Nicholas, NG 1884, Jupiter seducing Callisto, NG 1883, Arcas Hunting (National Gallery, 2008; online version 1, 2025) <https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E9R-000B-0000-0000> [accessed: 19 March 2025]