Mirtillo and Amaryllis,
oil on canvas, 121 x 156 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale Bastin, Chapellier, Liege, 21 January 1925, lot 90 (as by Aelbert Cuyp);
Collection of Armand Hessel (1871–1933), Antwerp;
his sale, Cerle Royal Artistique, Antwerp, 29 May 1933, lot 173 (as Govaert Flinck);
with S. Hartveld, Antwerp, 1934;
Collection Leo Stein, Vienna, 1936;
Private Collection, Prague, 1936;
sale Sjöström, Svensk-Franska, Stockholm, 2–4 December 1936, lot 25;
sale, Bukowskis, Stockholm, 28–31 October 1980, lot 445 (as C. Saftleven);
with Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1982 (as Jacob Gerritz. Cuyp);
with Langer, Antwerp, 1984;
Harewood Charitable Trust, Leeds;
sale, Christie’s, London, 5 July 1985, lot 49 (as by Jacob Gerritz. Cuyp);
European Private collection;
sale, Bonhams, London, 4 July 2007, lot 77 (as Dordrecht school)

Literature:
J. W. Moltke, Govaert Flinck 1615-1660, Amsterdam 1965, p. 237, no. 54 illustrated (as Govaert Flinck)

The present finely rendered depiction of a gallant shepherd and comely shepherdess in an Arcadian setting is typical of the popularity of such works of emotive, bucolic beauty among erudite Dutch collectors in the first half of the seventeenth century. The literary source for such a composition is likely Il pastor fido, a pastoral tragicomedy set in an idealised golden age, or pre-modern paradise, by the Italian poet and statesman Giovanni Battista Guarini (1538–1612) first published in 1590 in Venice.

In Guarini’s work, the Gods demand a virgin be sacrificed yearly to appease them. In what is a complex double plot a foreign shepherd Mirtillo arrives on the scene, and rescues the demi-god Amaryllis from a funeral pyre. Here they are depicted betrothed, symbolised by the floral garland Mirtillo hands to Amaryllis. The setting and characters of the play also likely inspired a Dutch work Granida, 1605, by Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft, a popular subject for several Utrecht School painters. However, the handling of the present work, reveals rather a hand of the Dordrecht School, from around the 1640s.