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Shown from the about the thighs up, a man, a woman holding a swaddled baby, and a satyr, which has a man’s torso and goat’s legs, sit and stand around a table in a deeply shadowed room, filling this horizontal painting. All the people have light skin and dark hair, and are lit dramatically from our left. To our left, the bare-chested satyr faces our right in profile as he leans toward the table, looking up at the woman. He wears a crown of leaves and has a dark goatee. Almost lost in shadow, a sable-brown horn juts up from his temple. Light falls across his bare shoulders, and his hands and neck are ruddy. Another ring of leaves encircles his waist over the silvery-gray fur of his goat’s legs. He holds his left hand, farther from us, in front of his chest with his open palm facing the couple to our right. His other hand rests at the top of a wooden staff behind his right hip, closer to us. The staff disappears behind a wood plank resting across at least one barrel, which presumably acts as the bench on which he sits on or hovers slightly over. The second man sits at the table to our right, his back mostly to us as he looks over his left shoulder, up toward the satyr, with his face in profile. One brow is cocked over the dark eye we can see, and he has a prominent nose and a mustache. He wears a loose-fitting, long-sleeved, white garment tied around the waist. He blows across a soup spoon held to his lips, his cheeks puffed. He leans on his other arm, which rests on the tabletop near a blue bowl. Across the table, behind the seated man, a woman looks back at the satyr from the corners of her eyes, her coral-red lips curled up in a smile. Her body faces our left and she tilts her head to her left, our right, as she turns her face down toward that shoulder. Her dark brown hair is pulled up and back, and she wears an olive-green wrap over a white shirt. The baby she holds leans away from her chest to twist and look back at the satyr as well. A few details eventually emerge from the deeply shadowed background, including a fourth person tucked into the lower left corner, who looks back over a shoulder at us or the group. Light rims the corner of a window cut from a stone wall, and a few ceramic dishes and cups line two shelves to our right behind the woman.

Johann Liss

The Satyr and the Peasant, possibly c. 1623/1626

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 45

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 133.3 x 167.4 cm (52 1/2 x 65 7/8 in.)

Credit Line

Widener Collection

Accession Number

1942.9.39

Artists / Makers

Johann Liss (artist) German, c. 1597 - 1631

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Overview

The unusual subject of this painting comes from one of Aesop's fables. In his Man and the Satyr, he related how a demigod helped a peasant who was lost on a wintry day. When the mortal put his chilled fingers to his mouth to breathe warmth onto them, the immortal satyr was astonished. Later, in thanks for the satyr's guidance, the peasant invited him to eat. The soup being hot, the man blew on his spoon to cool it. Johann Liss portrayed the tale's climax when the satyr jumps up in disgust, proclaiming, "From this moment I renounce your friendship, for I will have nothing to do with one who blows hot and cold with the same breath" -- the moral being that all humans are hypocrites because they inconsistently blow hot and cold.

Johann Liss was among the initiators of the dynamic baroque style of the 1600s. The sonorous color scheme shows his knowledge of past Venetian masters such as Titian and Veronese, while the dramatic conflict of light and shadow reveals an acquaintance with the spotlighting which Caravaggio concurrently employed in Rome. But the main influences here are the energized movement and robust figure types derived from the contemporary Antwerp geniuses, Jacob Jordaens and Peter Paul Rubens.

More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries, which is available as a free PDF https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/german-painting-fifteenth-through-seventeenth-centuries.pdf

Provenance

Aron de Joseph de Pinto [d. 1785], Spain and The Netherlands, by 1780.[1] Lopes Leao de Laguna, The Netherlands.[2] (Leo Nardus [1868-1955], Suresnes, France, and New York); sold 1897 to Peter A.B. Widener, Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania; inheritance from the Estate of Peter A.B. Widener by gift through power of appointment of Joseph E. Widener, Elkins Park; gift 1942 to NGA.

[1] Catalogue of Paintings Forming the Private Collection of P.A.B. Widener, Ashbourne-near Philadelphia. Part II. Early English and Ancient Painting. (1885-1900), 270, no. 270. The painting is not listed in the catalogue of the de Pinto sale, Amsterdam, Van der Schley & Yver, 11 April 1785; letter of 16 December 1988 to John Hand from Gerbrand Kotting, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague.

[2] See note 1.

Associated Names

Laguna, Lopes Leao de
Nardus, Leo
Pinto, Aron de Joseph de
Widener, Joseph E.
Widener, Peter Arrell Brown

Exhibition History

1975: Johann Liss, Rathaus, Augsburg, Germany; The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975-1976, no. A10.

Technical Summary

The support is composed of six pieces of linen sewn together. The main body of the painting is formed by two pieces with a vertical seam just left of center, while four small pieces of fabric, 9 cm in height, are joined in a narrow strip across the top of the painting. The plain-weave linen is of medium-fine threads, unevenly spun, and is moderately tightly woven. Although the original tacking margins are no longer extant, presumably only a very small amount was removed and the painting is close to its original size. The ground is made up of two layers, a thick red lower layer and a thin black upper one. The few pentimenti that are visible indicate minor adjustments in contours: the peasant's hair was extended farther out at the front, the bottom of the mother's right cheek was made fuller, and the lengths of one finger each on the satyr's left and child's right hand were altered. There are scattered losses in the ground and paint layers near the edges and along the tears, with a few along the top horizontal seam, and small losses elsewhere. There is extensive and disfiguring abrasion throughout. The impasto in the areas of white paint, such as in the infant's dress and the mother's sleeve, has been flattened by previous relinings. There are several long tears in the support: on the child's forehead, at the center of the satyr's chest, on the peasant's arm, and between the peasant's arm and body; these have been mended and are now aligned and in plane.

Bibliography

1885: Catalogue of Paintings Forming the Collection of P.A.B. Widener, Ashbourne, near Philadelphia. 2 vols. Paris, 1885-1900: 2 (1900): 270, no. 270, repro.

1907: Mather, Frank Jewett. "Art in America." The Burlington Magazine 10 (January 1907): 269.

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1916: F. "Aus der Sammlerwelt und vom Kunsthandel." Der Cicerone 8 (1916): 40.

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1923: Paintings in the Collection of Joseph Widener at Lynnewood Hall. Intro. by Wilhelm R. Valentiner. Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, 1923: unpaginated, repro.

1931: Paintings in the Collection of Joseph Widener at Lynnewood Hall. Intro. by Wilhelm R. Valentiner. Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, 1931: 44-45, repro.

1935: Tietze, Hans. Meisterwerke europäischer Malerei in Amerika. Vienna, 1935: 336, no. 160, repro. (English ed., Masterpieces of European Painting in America. New York, 1939: 160, repro.).

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1963: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 309, repro.

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1996: Klessmann, Rüdiger. "Johann Liss's "Temptation of the Magdalen'." The Burlington Magazine 138, no. 1,116 (March 1996): 187, 188, 189.

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