Venus and Mercury,
dated lower right on the quiver: 1601,
oil on panel, 107.5 x 80 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly aristocratic collection, Scandinavia;
possibly sale, Christie’s, London, 27 May 1977, lot 21;
Private European collection

The present panel presents a fascinating insight into the artistic circle gathered by Emperor Rudolf II in Prague at the turn of the seventeenth century. The leading light of this group of Northern Mannerist court artists was the Antwerp-born Bartholomäus Spranger (1546–1611), and the current picture appears to be the work of an accomplished, but as yet unidentified hand, very much in the master’s immediate orbit.

The subject of Venus and Mercury provided a mythological setting for what is effectively a study of the beauty of contorted and intertwined nude forms, as fitted the recherché tastes of Rudolf II and his court, which was Bohemian in both the modern and the antique sense of the word. Spranger first treated this subject in a drawing (in reverse to the present composition) in the collection of Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (inv. no. 1974.38). Spranger’s design was further employed by the engraver Jan Harmensz. Muller (1571–1628) in his print of the same subject, published around 1600 (see F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, vols. 1–64, Amsterdam, 1954–2010, cat. no. XIV.108.63, p. 108). The present panel omits the doves added by Muller, in that regard remaining truer to Spranger’s original prototype.