Joachim Anthonisz. Wtewael

Private collection, Belgium, since the mid-nineteenth century;
Thence by descent until recently sold.

A. Lowenthal in European Paintings - From 1600-1917. Baroque, Rococo, Romanticism, Realism, Futurism, London and New York 2001, pp. 11, 13-17, 86, 104-05, reproduced in colour p. 15;
P. Matthiesen, 2001. An Art Odyssey 1500-1720. Classicsim, Mannerism, Caravaggism and Baroque, London 2001, pp. 170-77, cat. no. 17, reproduced in colour p. 171.

The following condition report is provided by Hamish Dewar, who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. UNCONDITIONAL AND WITHOUT PREJUDICE Structural Condition The artist's copper support is securely held with horizontal and vertical batons around the framing edges on the reverse. Paint Surface The paint surface has a reasonably even varnish layer. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows quite extensive retouchings, many of which are small dots and lines, presumably covering flake losses. There are more concentrated retouchings on the figures of Mars and Venus, on the standing figure on the left of the composition and the figure in the shadows behind Mars. There are also retouchings around the framing edges, and other scattered retouchings. Summary The painting is therefore in stable condition, having had a number of retouchings applied in the past and no further work is required.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This is Wtewael’s largest treatment on copper of this most favoured of subjects, and also probably his last. It foresees the artist’s move in 1612 towards a more classicizing style whereupon he ceased to paint the small erotic mythologies on copper that had dominated his output since the late 1590s and which are undoubtedly his greatest achievements as a painter, in favour of larger works on panel.

Four other versions of the subject on copper are known: one in the Mauritshuis, The Hague, is dated 1601; another in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, is datable circa 1606-10; another sold  London, Christie’s, 3 July 2012, lot 8 (for £4,100,000) is dated 1610; and a small oval is recorded in 1933 but not otherwise known.¹ While substantially larger than these four other known versions, the present version differs most markedly from them in its horizontal format, and in the greater subtlety of its subject. Where in the two earliest versions in the Getty and Mauritshuis Mars and Venus are discovered in flagrante and the gods openly mock them with laughter, here their interrupted union is suggested merely by their nakedness and the overlapping of a leg, while the gods’ open laughter has given way to smiles. Whether this change is a result of a patron’s wishes or an artistic impulse on the part of Wtewael is impossible to say, but the fact that the recently discovered 1610 version is neither as explicit as its predecessors, not quite as subtle as the present 1611 version, would suggest that it has more to do with a progressive rumination within the artist’s mind, itself probably in response to the growing Calvinist puritanism that pervaded Utrecht at the time.

The subject is treated very similarly in all versions. In a prior and separate scene Vulcan is seen through a door in the back fashioning a fine metal mesh. In the foreground Mercury, who envied Mars his relationship with Venus, reveals the two of them interrupted from their union under an elaborate canopy while Cupid, who had instigated the affair, hovers above. Vulcan, wearing the same hat in the Getty and ex-Christie’s version, readies his mesh. Other gods, not always the same from version to version, jostle for a view. Here Ceres pulls back the rearmost drape and Apollo swoops down from above to peel back another. The scene is full of erotic innuendo, not least in Mercury’s placement of his right hand on the pudenda of the caryatid bedpost, and, despite the mythological subject, it makes several references to contemporary life in the furnishings which are for the most part contemporary in style to the painting.  

PROVENANCE
The painting was discovered in 2001 having been unknown to Anne Lowenthal when compiling her 1986 catalogue of Wtewael’s oeuvre, and to all previous scholars. At the time of its discovery it was thought to be identifiable with the painting by the artist in the 1826 sale of the collector Paul-Jean Pletinckz in Brussels: ‘lot 32. Mars and Venus surprised by the gods; charming painting; by Joachim Untewael, 1610’. However, the discovery of the painting sold at Christie’s in 2012, itself dated 1610, makes that painting far more likely to be identifiable with the Pletinckz picture.

1. It was sold Berlin, Internationales Kunsthaus, 9 May 1933, lot 244.