The Nymph of the Spring

after 1537

Lucas Cranach the Elder

Artist, German, 1472 - 1553

A nude woman with pale, rosy skin lies across a grassy field in front of a pool fed by water from a rocky outcropping, with a town in the distance in this horizontal painting. The woman lies back against a scarlet-red garment, presumably a dress, bunched under her shoulders, with her head to our left. Her face turns to us, but she cuts her eyes to our right, her lids nearly closed. She has a wide face, a pointed chin, and her thin, rose-pink lips are closed. Her blond hair is pulled back and gossamer fabric, nearly invisible, creates a veil reaching her arched eyebrows. She rests her head against her raised right arm, closest to the grass on which she lies, and her other arm rests along the side of her body. Her ankles are together but her knees fall slightly apart. More sheer fabric wraps across her hips. She wears a black cord tied in a bow around her neck and a longer, thick, gold chain necklace with a pendant with a ruby-red stone and pearls. On her left hand, along her body, she wears a crimson-red and gold, jeweled bracelet and three gold rings with red and blue jewels on her thumb, pointer, and pinkie fingers. The grass beneath her is painted with emerald-green plants and leaves against a dark, forest-green background. Two partridges walk in the grass, one pecking at the ground, near the lower right corner of the composition. An ash-gray tree trunk spans the height of the painting near the birds, and a bow and garnet-red, long, box-like quiver of arrows hang from a branch. Beyond the band of grass, to our left, is a pool being fed from a stream of water coming from the rocky, cave-like opening above. The pool is lined with more dark green trees and bushes. In the distance, to our right, is a town with slate-gray buildings with burgundy-red roofs. The sky above deepens from pale, sunshine yellow along the horizon to shell pink to watery blue. A rectangular plaque in the upper left corner reads, “FONTIS NYMPHA SACRI SOM NVM NE RVMP QVIESCO.” On the rock face of the cave nearby is a tiny silhouette of a serpent with folded wings holding a ring in its mouth.

Media Options

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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.

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

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on panel

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Clarence Y. Palitz

  • Dimensions

    overall: 48.4 x 72.8 cm (19 1/16 x 28 11/16 in.)
    framed: 62.9 x 87.6 cm (24 3/4 x 34 1/2 in.)

  • Accession

    1957.12.1

Artwork history & notes

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 (partial and promised)1957 to NGA; gift completed 1958.
[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.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1939

  • Classics of the Nude, M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1939, no. 5A.

  • 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.

2016

  • Lucas Cranach, the Elder: 500 Years of the Power of Temptation, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo; The National Museum of Art, Osaka, 2016-2017, no. 56, 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.

1968

  • 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.

  • Liebmann, Michael. "On the Iconography of the Nymph of the Fountain." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968): 436.

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 27, repro.

  • Galvan, Jose Maria Moreno, ed. Galleria Nazionale di Washington. Madrid, 1968: 35, fig. 5, 26.

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.

  • 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

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 105, repro.

  • Gregory, Clive, ed. "Cranach." In The Great Artists: Their Lives, Works, and Inspiration 41. 4 vols. London 1985: 2:1304-1305, 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

  • Noll, Thomas. Albrecht Altdorfer in seiner Zeit: Religiöse und profane Themen in der Kunst um 1500. Munich, 2004: 396-397, 575 fig. 187.

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 132-133, no. 100, color repro.

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.

Inscriptions

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

Wikidata ID

Q20176168

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