National Gallery of Art :: The Collection :: The Nymph of the Spring
  • Overview
  • Inscription
  • Provenance
  • Exhibition History
  • Bibliography

Overview

A note of ambiguity or unease often gives a piquant quality to German adaptations of the Renaissance ideal. Cranach's painting of a classical nymph represents an Italian theme but gives it a moralizing twist common to late Gothic courtly and amorous subjects.

The nymph reclines beside a spring, perhaps a reference to a legendary ancient Roman fountain with which a Latin verse was associated. The text was translated by Alexander Pope in 1725:

Nymph of the grot, these springs I keep,
And to the murmurs of these waters sleep;
Ah, spare my slumbers, gently tread the cave!
And drink in silence, or in silence lave!

The inscription on this painting -- I am the nymph of the sacred spring, do not disturb my sleep. I am resting -- may be an allusion to the poem. Though exposed by modern scholarship as a fifteenth-century counterfeit, the poem influenced Italian garden decoration, which not infrequently included fountains with attendant reclining nymphs. However, the proportions of Cranach's nude are more Gothic than classical, and the robe on which she rests her head is that of a German court lady. Far from sleeping, she admires herself beguilingly through lowered eyelids. The painting is intended both as an enticement and a warning to Cranach's sophisticated patrons.

Inscription

upper left: FONTIS NYMPHA SACRI SOM: / NVM NE RVMPE QVIESCO (I am the Nymph of the Sacred Spring. Do not disturb my sleep. I am resting.); to the right of the inscription, the artist's device, a serpent with folded wings holding a ring in its mouth, facing left

Marks and Labels

null

Provenance

Probably Baron von Schenck, Flechtingen Castle, near Magdeburg.[1] (Bohler and Steinmeyer, Lucerne and New York, 1931-1933).[2] Clarence Y. Palitz [d.1958], New York, by 1939;[3] gift 1957 to NGA.

[1] Max J. Friedländer and Jacob Rosenberg. Die Gemälde von Lucas Cranach. (Berlin, 1932), 53-54, nos. 123-124 (Rev. ed. The Paintings of Lucas Cranach. Amsterdam, 1978, 99, nos. 145-146, repro.), cites the painting as being formerly in the von Schenck collection, though this is not verified.

[2] Information from a copy of the Böhler stock records in the Getty Provenance Index, Santa Monica; letter of 18 August 1988, from Martha Hepworth to Sally E. Mansfield, in curatorial files. The painting is listed as being on consignment from "Sarasota," it has not been possible to verify Hepworth's suggestion that this might refer to John Ringling. A notation in the stock records suggests that the painting passed to the dealer Paul Cassirer, but it has not been possible to confirm this. Böhler and Steinmeyer was the firm created by Julius Böhler, Munich, and Fritz Steinmeyer, Lucerne, and operated from the 1920s on; see letter of 29 August 1988, in curatorial files, from Julius Böhler to John Hand.

[3] Listed as being in his collection in the Exhibition catalogue Classics of the Nude, New York, 1939, no. 54.

Exhibition History

1939
Classics of the Nude, M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1939, no. 5A.
1939
Masterpieces of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300-1800, New York World's Fair, 1939, no. 59, repro.
1940
Golden Gate International Exposition, Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, 1940, no. 137.
1998
Felipe II: El Rey íntimo. Jardín y naturaleza en el siglo XVI, Palacio del Real Sitio de Aranjuez, Madrid, 1998, no. 253, repro.
2003
Kleopatra blir Ariadne. Identitet och Förvandling [From Cleopatra to Ariadne. Identity and Transformation], Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, 2003-2004, no. 2, repro.
2010
Cranach et son temps, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, 2010-2011, no. 112, repro.

Bibliography

1932
Friedländer, Max J. and Jakob Rosenberg, Die Gemälde von Lucas Cranach. Berlin, 1932: 89, no. 324, repro. (Rev. ed. The Paintings of Lucas Cranach. Amsterdam, 1978: 150, no. 403, repro.
1959
Rosten, Leo. "Cranach--The Impish Nude." Look (20 January, 1959): repro. (Repr. in The Story Behind the Painting. New York, 1962: 52, color repro. 53).
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 34
1967
Talbot, Charles W. Jr. "An Interpretation of Two Paintings by Cranach in the Artist's Late Style." Studies in the History of Art 1967 (1968): 68, 78-85, fig. 8.
1968
Galvan, Jose Maria Moreno, ed. Galleria Nazionale di Washington. Madrid, 1968: 35, fig. 5, 26.
1968
European Paintings and Sculpture: Illustrations (Companion to the Summary Catalogue, 1965). Washington, 1968: 27, no. 1497, repro.
1968
Liebmann, Michael. "On the Iconography of the Nymph of the Fountain." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968): 436.
1974
Bonicatti, Maurizio and Claudia Cieri. "Lucas Cranach alle soglie dell'Umanesimo italiano." The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1974): 280, n. 42.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 86, repro. 87.
1975
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: 165, no. 189, repro.
1976
Koepplin, Dieter and Tilman Falk. Lukas Cranach: Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik. Exh. cat. 2 vols. Kunstmuseum, Basel, 1976: 2:638, under no. 547.
1977
Börsch-Supan, Helmut. "Cranachs Quellnymphen und sein Gestaltungsprinzip der Variation." In Akten des Kolloquiums zur Basler Cranach-Ausstellung, 1974. Basel, 1977: 21.
1983
Wolff, Martha. German Art of the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1983: unpaginated, repro.
1984
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 165, no. 183, color repro.
1985
Gregory, Clive, ed. "Cranach." In The Great Artists: Their Lives, Works, and Inspiration 41. 4 vols. London 1985: 2:1304-1305, repro.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 105, repro.
1991
Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1991: 259-260, no. 158, color repro. 260 (the painting was not in the exhibition).
1992
National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 71, repro.
1993
Hand, John Oliver, with the assistance of Sally E. Mansfield. German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries (The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue). Washington, 1993: 34-40, color repro. 37.
1995
Löcher, Kurt. Review of German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries, by John Oliver Hand with the assistance of Sally E. Mansfield. Kunstchronik 43 no. 1 (January 1995): 15.
1996
Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane. Encyclopedia of Women in Religious Art. New York, 1996: 87, fig. 27.
2000
Schoon, Peter and Sander Paarlberg, eds. Greek Gods and Heroes in the Age of Rubens and Rembrandt. Exh. cat. National Gallery/Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens; Netherlands Institute, Athens; Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht, 2000-2001: 110, fig. 88 (the painting was not in the exhibition).
2004
Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 132-133, no. 100, color repro.
2004
Noll, Thomas. Albrecht Altdorfer in seiner Zeit: Religiöse und profane Themen in der Kunst um 1500. Munich, 2004: 396-397, 575 fig. 187.
2010
Depoorter, Matthias. "De onbekende wereld van Lucas Cranach." Review of De wereld van Lucas Cranach: Een kunstenaar in de tijd van Dürer, Titiaan en Metsys. Exh. Paleis voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels 2010. In Openbaar kunstbezit vlanderen 48, no. 5 (October-November 2010): 22-24, color repro.

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