Mireille Mosler, Ltd.
Peter Paul Rubens Head of Medusa, from: Six studies after Antique Gems and Coins Pen & brown ink with framing line in black ink on paper 5.4 x 5.5 cm. The Morgan Library & Museum, inv.no. 162:3
Studios of Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) & Frans Snyders (1579–1657) Head of Medusa, ca. 1617-18 Oil on canvas 29 1/4 by 44 7/8 inches (74.5 by 114 cm.)
Provenance Possibly Dr. Charlton Rice (1710-1789), Bath1 His sale, Christie’s, London, 5 March 1790, lot 18 (as Rubens) Possibly James Butt His sale, Christie’s, London, 3 January 1795, lot 35 (as Rubens), unsold His sale, Christie’s, London, 4 December 1795, lot 23 (as Rubens) Bull, London His sale, Christie’s, London, 17 November 1797, lot 54 (as Rubens) With Christopher Gibbs Ltd., London, 1977 (as Studio of Rubens) Sale, Christie’s, London, 14 December 1979, lot 128 (as Studio of Rubens) Sale, Christie’s, London, 26 February 1982, lot 8 (as studio of Rubens) Mr. & Mrs. William Llewelyn, Plas Teg, Pontblyddyn, Wales Cornelia Bayley, Plas Teg, 1986-2016 With Simon C. Dickinson, Ltd., London, 2016 With Mireille Mosler, Ltd., New York, 2017, sold to Private collection, New York Literature The Burlington Magazine, no. 119, September 1977, p. LXXIII, ill. J.G. van Gelder, “Das Rubens-Bild. Ein Rückblick”, in: Peter Paul Rubens, Werk und Nachruhm, Augsburg 1981, p. 38, n. 12 H. Robels, Frans Snyders: Stilleben und Tiermaler, Munich 1989, p. 371, no. 276b P.C. Sutton, The Age of Rubens, Boston 1993, p. 247, n. 16 J. Tátrai, a.o., Rubens, Van Dyck and the splendor of Flemish Painting, Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, 2019, p. 214 and fn. 5 G. Gruber, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Mythologies II, forthcoming publication 1
Physician and medical researcher at Bath hospital, an appropriate owner for such a macabre painting.
Until recently, Head of Medusa in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, was believed to be the primary version on canvas by Rubens, and by far the most notorious picture of all. Another, less known painting on panel in the Moravian Gallery, Brno, was previously considered a copy until it was rehabilitated as the prime version by Gero Seelig on the basis of visible pentimenti.2 This prompted the Kunsthistorisches Museum to bring the two paintings together and study them side by side in 2018.3 Further technical analysis through macro X-ray fluorescence scans determined that the Brno painting is indeed the original version and can be dated earlier, circa 1612-1613, whereas the Vienna picture is now considered a workshop copy with retouches by Rubens, primarily in the face.4 As with other successful compositions, Rubens delivered several versions to meet the demand for a popular picture. The uniqueness of the composition was apparently less important and replicas were widely accepted, sometimes considered better finished as the artist would strive for perfection and surpass the previous painting.5 Regardless of which version, the macabre fascination with Rubens’ rendering of Medusa lies in the tension between attraction and repugnance. Disgusted by the hyper-realistic entanglement of grisly snakes and bursting arteries, in all its terribilità, we sympathize with Medusa as we ponder her tragic tale.
G. Seelig, Medusa’s Menagerie. Otto Marseus van Schrieck and the Scholars, Schwerin 2017, p. 45 G. Gruber & P. Tomášek, “Albtraumhaft Schön: Rubens’ Wiener Medusenhaupt trifft auf die Brünner Fassung”, Ansichtssache #23, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, 30 November 2018 – 24 March 2019 4 G. Gruber, op.cit., email communication 8 May 2019 and a forthcoming publication to be published in Mythologies II in the Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard. 5 Max Rooses & Charles Ruelens, Correspondance de Rubens et Documents Epistolaires concernant sa Vie et ses Oeuvres Publies, Codex Diplomaticus Rubenianus, Antwerpen 1898, Bd. II, 93 2 3
According to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the ravishing but mortal Medusa was particularly admired for her beautiful hair. Raped by Neptune in Minerva’s temple, the enraged goddess punished the violation of her temple by transforming Medusa in a snake-haired monster. Her previously pretty face became so horrendous that the mere sight of it turned onlookers into stone. Perseus, avoiding eye contact by looking at her reflection in his mirrored shield, decapitated Medusa in her sleep. Medusa’s head became Perseus’ prized possession: a weapon to fight his enemies. Eventually Minerva attached the trophy head to her own shield. A number of relevant precedents for the monster of Medusa include a lost work by Leonardo da Vinci and Caravaggio’s tondo which Rubens may have seen on his trip to Florence in or shortly after 1600. Whereas Caravaggio depicts Medusa’s final screech, Rubens took an entirely new approach by capturing Medusa not long after her assassination, achieving a reaction of recoil and admiration. Whatever part of the myth we encounter: Medusa is always removed from her own narrative as her story is told by her killer.
Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio (1571-1610) Medusa’s Head on Minerva’s Shield, 1598 Canvas on wood, 60 x 55 cm. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, inv.no. 135
Medusa’s head is framed by hair and snake strands, the pool of blood under the clearly visible stump of the neck is teeming with small snakes, individual drops of blood appear to have coagulated in an egg shape, from which snakes are cast. On the far right, however, a snake gives birth to straight snakes. Rubens may have found inspiration at home from pictorial inventions such as the 1593 engraving by Wierix after Marten de Vos, the Triumph of Truth. The female viper conceives by taking the male’s head in her mouth. In ecstasy, she then bites off his head, an act he does not survive. When her young are born, they in turn bite through their mother’s side, causing her demise. This pernicious cycle of life certainly stands in as a metaphor for Medusa’s own fateful existence.
Johannes Wierix, after Maerten de Vos Triumph of Truth, 1593 Engraving, 24.3 x 19.7 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam RP-P-1966-15
It is unlikely that Rubens produced a preliminary oil sketch to work out the composition and determine which parts were Snyders’ responsibility and which were his own: the design is not overly complicated and may not have called for preparatory drawings or sketches. The pentimenti on the Brno panel also indicate an immediacy in execution, although the Vienna painting does show slight changes in composition: the cut of the neck and the bewildered eye, as well as highlights on the snakes. A later canvas by Ruben’s pupil Victor Wolfvoet, now in Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie, follows the intricate detail of the Rubensian invention, replacing the symbolically exaggerated and mannerist conception of Medusa with a crassly naturalistic and horrific representation.6 It supports the idea that perhaps the Vienna or present workshop variation remained in the Rubens studio to impress visitors or inspire students.
Victor Wolfvoet (1612-1652) The Head of Medusa, ca. 1648 Canvas, 45.5 x 59 cm. Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, inv.no. 1050
6
J. Tátrai, op.cit, p. 214
According to the Aristotelian view, hair forms when vapors, exhaled through the body’s pores, come into contact with air. Vapors were considered residues the body is unable to dispose of when not turned into nourishment, as more successfully processed by men. Because women are colder and moist, their bodies are unable to transform the vapors as efficiently, leaving them with an excess of superfluous matter, hence more hair. What is not used to produce hair, is expelled as menstrual blood, considered poisonous to men and turning bronze into black. By design, the female body was considered venomous.
Italian (Padua) Snake, ca. 1500-1510 Bronze, 22 x 7 x 3 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Kunstkammer, inv.no. 5907
Although shown here independent of her murderer, Rubens does not use Medusa’s head as a heraldic object of tradition but feeds into the widespread angst of women mastering men, a trope started with Adam and Eve. Perseus decapitation of Medusa asserts male domination: he not only vanquishes her but gains control over her deadly weaponry. Heroism besides: Medusa will not be controlled as her corrupted body continues to disseminate evil throughout the world. Exemplifying female rage, Medusa is a misogynist projection and a fantasy of her power. With her decapitated head on the ground, before Perseus picks it up, Rubens invented the most frightening portrayal of Medusa, suggesting that the capacity to engender evil is not unique but inherent in all women.
Peter Paul Rubens Head of Medusa, ca. 1612-13 Oil on panel, 60.6 x 112 cm. Moravian Gallery, Brno, inv.no. A2
Studio of Peter Paul Rubens & attributed to Frans Snyders The Head of Medusa, ca. 1617-18 Oil on canvas, 68.5 x 118 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, inv.no. 3834
Studios of Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) & Frans Snyders (1579–1657) Head of Medusa, ca. 1617-18 Oil on canvas, 74.5 by 114 cm. Mireille Mosler, Ltd., New York
Rubens collaborated with Frans Snyders on still life elements in his paintings over the course of three decades. Although Rubens worked with many painters, it was Snyders, the first artist to develop the animal still life genre in Flanders, who was particularly capable to work on a large scale, making him a fitting partner for some of Rubens’s grandest compositions.7 Born in Antwerp, Snyders studied under Pieter Brueghel the Younger and made the requisite trip to Italy in 1608. Upon his return to Antwerp the following year, he became part of the circle that included Jacob Jordaens, Jan Brueghel the Elder and Rubens. The collaboration is also based on Constantijn Huygens’ (1596-1687) account of seeing the Medusa by Rubens and Snyders in the collection of Nicolaas Sohier (1590-1642), a wealthy merchant and tax collector in Amsterdam. Eliciting shock and a thrill of terror, the painting was kept behind a curtain for maximum effect. Recent provenance research established that this is the same painting that entered the Brno collection in 1818.8 The Vienna painting is now identified as the version owned by the Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628), recorded in his estate in 1635.9 Our version seemed to have been in England at least since the eighteenth century and since 1982 at Plas Teg, a Jacobean house built for Sir John Trevor I circa 1610. Supposedly one of the most haunted houses in Wales, it was a suitable setting for the frightening Gorgon. Snyders’ ideal combination of scientific accuracy and artistry is clearly demonstrated in his precise depiction of the snakes.10 Although Snyders may have made studies after living species, he was probably more reliant on dead specimen, drawings in natural history treatises, engravings and perhaps bronze casts taken from life. Most of the serpents can be identified as European grass or water snakes, but the composition also includes other creatures: a salamander, scorpion and spiders that seem to be fictionalized. These symbols of evil and danger culminate in the contemporary viewer’s fascination with the repulsive.
Susan Koslow, “’How Looked the Gorogon Then…’ The Science and Poetics of The Head of Medusa by Rubens and Snyders”, in: Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive Presented on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday, Cambridge, Harvard Art Museums, 1995, pp. 147-149 8 G. Hoet, Catalogus of naamlyst van schilderyen met derselver pryzen, II, p. 374, no. 13, since neither Huygens nor when the painting appeared in the sale of the Dowager van Warmenhuysen on 25 July 1719 in The Hague mentions the medium or dimensions. 9 Koslow, op.cit., The 1648 Antwerp sales catalogue of the collection of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, lists: ‘Medusa’s head with snakes [by] Rubens and Subter [a misspelling of Snyders]’. Koslow believes that Rubens may have touched up some of the snakes, which was typical of his working method. 10 Only two other pictures by Snyders show snakes: The Boar Hunt, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and The Eagles and the Dead Wolf, Musée de la Chasse, Paris. On the basis of first-hand inspection on 26 October 2016, Susan Koslow supports an attribution of the snakes to the studio of Snyders. 7
Previous left-hand page: Medusa, TEFAF New York, 2017 Previous right-hand page: Medusa, Vienna (left); Medusa, Brno (right), Vienna 2018/2019
Mireille Mosler, Ltd. 1 IRVING PLACE G22D NEW YORK, NY 10003 +1.917.362.5585 INFO@MIREILLEMOSLER.COM WWW.MIREILLEMOSLER.COM