Plate 1: Two Loggerhead or Green Sea Turtles, a Muskrat, and Shells

c.1575/1590s

Joris Hoefnagel

Artist, Flemish, 1542 - 1600

Two turtles and a gray rodent are in or around a trickling stream within an oval, painted frame in this horizontal watercolor painting. A russet-brown turtle swims or lies in the shallow stream near the bottom center of the oval. A number 1 appears near its face. Labeled number 2, the second turtle lies on its back on the riverbank to our left to show its ivory-white underbelly. Pebbles and a few shells line the stream. The gray rodent, numbered 3, is about a quarter the size of the turtles. Outlined against the blank background beyond the riverbank, it hunches its oval body and wraps its long, sinewy tail close to its body. One tiny front paw is raised, and its mouth pulls back to reveal minuscule sharp teeth. Writing in all caps and red ink above the oval reads, “IPSI TESTVDINES EDITE QVI CEPISTIS.” Text in dark, golden yellow, the same color as the painted oval, reads, “DOMVS AMICA DOMVS OPTA.” The number 1 appears to the right of the oval.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Ground Floor, Gallery G23

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    watercolor and gold paint on parchment

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald

  • Dimensions

    page size: 14.3 x 18.4 cm (5 5/8 x 7 1/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1987.20.7.2

  • Series Title

    Vol.III, Animalia Aqvatilia et Cochiliata (Aqva)

Associated Artworks

See all 59 artworks

Animalia Aqvatilia et Cochiliata (Aqva)

Joris Hoefnagel

1575

Plate 52: An Argonaut, Squid, Hermit Crabs, Shells, and a Crab

Joris Hoefnagel

1570

Plate 38: Burbot, Rockling, and Other Fish

Joris Hoefnagel

1570

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Emperor Rudolf II of Austria?[1]; Secretarius Heinrich Hagen, Vienna, 1611.[2] Count Emanuel Maria Joseph von Arco, Munich, 1751.[3] Graf von Seinsheim, canon of Salzburg and Speyer, 1753. Master stonemason Rüpfel, Munich, c. 1830. Joseph Anton Niggl [1792 - 1842], Markt Tölz. Karl August von Brentano [1817 - 1896], Augsburg. (sale, Rudolph Weigel, 28 October 1861, no. 2220-a-d]; (Frederick Startridge Ellis [active 1860 - 1885], London; formerly identified as F. S. Eliot)[3]; Henry Huth [1815 - 1878], London; by descent to his son, Alfred Henry Huth [1850 - 1910], London; (sale, Sotheby's' London, 12 June 1913, no. 3722); (William Wesley & Son, London); Charles Francis George Richard Schwerdt, Old Alresford House, Hampshire (his sale, Sotheby's' London, 15 July 1946, no. 2216); (The Rosenbach Company, Philadelphia); Lessing J. Rosenwald, Jenkintown; given to Edith Goodkind Rosenwald, Jenkintown; gift to NGA, 1987.
[1] Although Van Mander claims the series was commissioned and purchased by Rudolf, this is impossible as dates scattered throughout volumes pre-date Hoefnagel's' contact with Rudolf. The series does not appear in Rudolf's' inventory, though he is likely to have owned it at one time as many copies from the volumes appear in his natural history collections, now in Vienna (see Bass 2020, 12).
[2] Vignau-Wilberg 2017, 98 without documentation.
[3]Wolfgang Wegner, Kurfurst Carl Theodor von der Pfalz als Kunstsammler, Mannheim, 1960: 13.
[4] Ellis was a book dealer who frequently sold to Huth and wrote the catalogue of Huth's' collection. He started his own business just a year before The Four Elements appeared at Weigel. Ellis is correctly identified by M. Bartels, "Ueber abnorme Behaarung beim Menschen," Zeitschrift fu¨r Ethnologie 11 (1879): 155, note 1.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1982

  • Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire, = 1540 - 1680, The Art Museum, Princeton University, National Gallery of Art, Museum of Art, Carnegie Insitute, Pittsburgh (exh. cat. by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, no. 56.

  • Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire, 1540 - 1680, The Art Museum, Princeton University, National Gallery of Art, Museum of Art, Carnegie Insitute, Pittsburgh (exh. cat. by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, no. 56.

Bibliography

1984

  • Hendrix, Lee. Joris Hoefnagel and the Four Elements: a Study in Sixteenth-Century Nature Painting. Ph.D. Hendrix, Lee. Joris Hoefnagel and the Four Elements: a Study in Sixteenth-Century Nature Painting. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1984 (series).dissertation, Princeton University, 1984 (series).

2017

  • Vignau-Wilberg, Thea. Joris and Jacob Hoefnagel: Art and Science around 1600. Berlin, 2017: no. A6 (for series).

2019

  • Bass, Marisa Ann. Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt. Princeton, 2019 (for series).

Inscriptions

upper center in red ink: IPSI TESTVDINES EDITE QVI CEPISTIS.; animals in image numbered 1 in (gold?) and .2., and .3. in red ink and shell in image numbered 4 in (gold?); center right in gold: I.; lower center in brown ink: DOMVS AMICA DOMVS OPTA:
Facing page: upper center in black ink: Nemo inter curas, et seria duxit habendum, / Qualis in oceani fluctu TESTVDO nataret.

Wikidata ID

Q64590918

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