Plate 42: Two Genets or Civet Cats with Tulips
c.1575/1590s
Artist, Flemish, 1542 - 1600
Artwork overview
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Medium
watercolor and gold paint on parchment
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Credit Line
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Dimensions
page size (approximate): 14.3 x 18.4 cm (5 5/8 x 7 1/4 in.)
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Accession
1987.20.6.43
Associated Artworks
See all 70 artworks
Plate 56: Two Heads of Cabbage
Joris Hoefnagel
1570
Plate 43: Mongoose and Badger with Fruit Trees
Joris Hoefnagel
1570
Plate 5: An Ox and a Camel
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).
2021
Schober, Sarah-Marie. "Taming the Untamable: Early modern civet cats and the nature-culture dichotomy" Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek vol 71 (Humans and Other Animals, ed. Eric Jorink, Joanna Woodall, and Edward H. Wouk) (2021): 43-44 and fig. 13.
Inscriptions
upper center in red ink: Tanquam momentum staterae sic est ante te orbis TERRARVM: et ta[m/n]q[uam] gutta roris antelucani, quae descendit in TERRAM (For the whole world before thee is as a little grain of the balance, yea, as a drop of the morning dew that falleth down upon the earth. Wisdom of Solomon 11:22)
Facing page: upper center in brown ink: Tu solus altissimus, in omni Terra.ps.82. (“You alone are the most high over all the earth.” Psalms 82:19) (Latin Vulgate Bible); lower center in black ink: Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, DOMINVS, deus exercituum: / Plena est omnis terra gloria eius.Isaias.6. (“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.” Isaiah 6:3) (Latin Vulgate Bible)
Wikidata ID
Q64590868