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artist or maker

Wtewael, Joachim (b.c 1566, d.1638)

previously attributed to Bartholomaeus Spranger (Belgian or Flemish, b.1546, d.1611)

Date

c 1605

dated stylistically

Place of production

Utrecht, Netherlands

Medium

oil on copper

Type of object

paintings

Accession number

2993

Small oil painting on copper of the Judgement of Paris in a woodland clearing with a stream in the foreground. Paris is seated in the mid-ground on a tree, left of centre, with his two dogs before him. He is nude apart from a red robe. The three goddesses appear to the right in a group. They are all nude. Mercury, with red hat and caduceus, descends from above. Paris presents a golden apple to Venus, seen front on at the left of the group. Cupid stands to her left. Miverva is in the middle, and is seen from the back. She wears a gold helmet and carries a shield and spear. Juno, on the right, is in profile with her peacock behind.

There are two young nude river gods at lower left, one with an urn, the other with flowers who looks at the central group over his shoulder. A nymph with a floral wreath sits between them. At lower right, a river god with an urn reclines beside a nymph, possibly Ceres, holding a cornucopia. She wears wheat in her hair. Beside them are sheep and two goats.

There is a town on a hill in the left background, and a bridge with a cottage in the left distance.

Commentary

Joachim Wtewael painted in the mannerist style, long after it had become unfashionable elsewhere in Europe. This painting on copper is a very fine example of how he was able to compose a world in miniature, arranging nudes in contrasting poses harmonized into a triangular composition. A decade or so later, Wtewael made a much larger painting with the same subject (now in the National Gallery, London).

The classical story of the Judgement of Paris, where the goddesses Minerva, Juno and Venus were judged for their beauty, was popular with artists for the chance to show female nudes from a multitude of directions under the guise of classical learning. The Trojan shepherd Paris was instructed to judge the women by Jupiter, after they all claimed a golden apple that Strife had thrown into the crowd at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, with the flammable words that it should be a prize for the fairest. The three goddesses all tried to bribe Paris with gifts. Venus offered Paris the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Troy. Too good to miss, Paris awarded the goddess of Love the prize apple, and set off to kidnap the already married Helen, an escapade that led to the Trojan War.

As well as emphasising the beauty of the three goddesses, Wtewael also used his composition to comment on the artifice of painting, a theme very much present in the 16th century as artists debated the various merits of painting versus sculpture. The pool of water in the foreground highlights the three dimensional illusion that painting can create with a flat surface: the water reflects the goddess above it but also recedes into illusionistic depth.

Mannerism was developed in the middle years of the 16th century by Italian and French artists who sought to combine the strange contortions of Michelangelo's figures with the elegance and refinement of Raphael's art. Wtewael was Dutch, but he travelled to Italy and France in the 1580s where he studied this type of painting. He fully embraced the style in his work of the 1590s and explored its conventions throughout his life, revelling in its many possibilities for invention. He was able to paint on a very small as well as a large scale. In the later National Gallery example he used the larger scale to include animals in the foreground, and an earlier scene from the story in the background.

The piece's eroticism makes it a surprising acquisition for Alice de Rothschild, an unmarried woman. It was one of the pieces she purchased for the smoking-room in the Bachelors' Wing to replace items bequeathed by her brother Ferdinand to the British Museum.

Phillippa Plock, 2012

Physical description

Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)

152 x 203
142 x 194 - sight

Signature & date

not signed or dated

Inscriptions

This very curious ... [paper torn] ... and highly finished Picture
was painted by that eminent Artist Spranger.
Spranger was born at Antwerp in 1546; he studied at Paris, Milan and Parma, in the latter under Soiaro, the Disciple of the famous Corregio, afterwards be went to Rome and found a Protector and Patron in the Cardinal Farnese who recommended him to Pope Pius the 5th who engaged him to Paintin his Palace at Belvidere, He there spent 2 years and 10 months in Painting the last Judgment on a plate of copper 6 feet high, which contained 500 Heads: this piece was so highly valued, that after the death of Pius, it was placed over his Monument as its principal Ornament.
From Rome he entered into, the service of Maximilian & Rudolphus the
2nd by whom he was caressid & honor'd, and in 1588 Rudolphus enobled him and his Descendants and in the presence of the whole Court, put a Chain of Gold consisting of three rows round his neck and ordered him to wear it as long as he lived
F. Webb. 1794.
Inscription
on verso

History

Provenance

Possibly sold in the Willem Lormier (b.1682, d.1758) sale, The Hague, 4 July 1763, lot 292; possibly sold in the Coenraad van Heemskerck sale, The Hague, 7 October 1765, lot 35; possibly sold in an anonymous sale, Paris, 27 January 1882, lot 74; acquired by Alice de Rothschild (b.1847, d.1922); inherited by her great-nephew James de Rothschild (b.1878, d.1957); accepted by The Treasury Solicitor in lieu of taxes on the Estate of Mr James de Rothschild in 1963; given to Waddesdon (National Trust) in 1990.

Collection

Waddesdon (National Trust)
Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Trust for display at Waddesdon Manor, 1990

Bibliography

Ellis Waterhouse, Anthony Blunt; Paintings: The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor; Fribourg; Office du Livre, The National Trust; 1967; p. 186, cat. no. 80, ill.
Sidsel Helliesen, Wtewael, Master Drawings, 15, 1976, 16-21; pp. 18-21
Anne W Lowenthal; Joachim Wtewael and Dutch Mannerism; Netherlands; Davaco; 1986; p. 104, no. A-25; as just after 1600
♦; Anne W Lowenthal; Netherlandish Mannerism in British Collections; Entwistle Gallery, London, June 7 - July 10 1990; London; Entwistle Gallery (London); 1990; pp. 28, 30, fig. 25
Michael Hall; Waddesdon Manor: The Heritage of a Rothschild House; New York; Harry N Abrams Inc; 2002; p. 190, ill.

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