DENYS CALVAERT (1540-1619)
DENYS CALVAERT (1540-1619)
DENYS CALVAERT (1540-1619)
DENYS CALVAERT (1540-1619)
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DENYS CALVAERT (1540-1619)

Danaë and the Shower of Gold

Details
DENYS CALVAERT (1540-1619)
Danaë and the Shower of Gold
with inscription 'A. Carracci' (on the mount)
red chalk, red wash, heightened with white and squared in red chalk, with red chalk framing lines on paper
6 ¼ x 5 ½ in. (15.9 x 13.9 cm.)
来源
Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680), London (L. 2092).
Edward A. Wrangham (1928-2009), London; sale, Sotheby's, London, 1 July 1965, lot 61 (as Bolognese School late 16th Century).
Michael Jaffé (1923-1997), Cambridge, then by descent; sale, Dominic Winter, Cirencester, 22 October 2019, lot 218.
Acquired at the above sale.

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拍品专文

Only in the last decades of his life, around 1600, did Denys Calvaert began producing paintings of erotic subjects, probably influenced by the artistic production at the court of Rudolf II in Prague. Three different painted versions of Danaë and the Shower of Gold are known (M. Danieli, ‘Pittura erotica tra Bologna e Praga: aggiunte a Denys Calvaert e Dirck de Quade van Ravesteyn’, in Czech and Slovak Journal of Humanities: Historia artium, no. 3, 2016, pp. 42-43). This drawing is quite closely related to the version that Calvaert painted around 1616 for Jacob Arnold, garrison of Papal Swiss Guards in Bologna, now in the Ferens Art Gallery in Kingston upon Hull (inv. KINCM:2005.4794; ibid., p. 49, fig. 6).

This drawing has been dated to around 1600 by the Calvaert scholar Michele Danieli. As Danieli has pointed out, in the early years of the 17th century Calvaert began to produce cabinet pictures with secular erotic themes, dominated by large female nudes and typified by the four aforementioned Danaë paintings, that are very different from the mainly religious works he had painted up to that point.

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