Sebastian Vrancx Antwerp 1573 - 1647

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Description

Sebastiaan Vrancx
a battle between the trojans and the latins
inscribed below with the appropriate text from Virgil
bears monogram, lower left: HG;
pen and brown ink and wash over traces of black chalk, within drawn brown ink framing lines

Provenance

Brno/Feldmann inventory number 3154

Exhibited

Brno, Moravská Galerie, Nizozemská Kresba 16.-18. století ze sbírek Moravské Galerie v Brne, 1987, p.18, no.38

Literature

L. Wood Ruby, 'Sebastiaen Vrancx as Illustrator of Virgil's Aeneid,' Master Drawings, vol. XXVIII, no. 1, 1990, pp. 54, 70, 71 (note 9)

Catalogue Note

This is one of a series of at least sixty-five drawings illustrating Virgil's epic, which were first attributed to Vrancx by Ruth Muthmann and Andrew Robison in 1983, and are fully discussed by Louisa Wood Ruby (loc. cit.). It was Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann who recognised in 1985 that the present drawing, which illustrates an episode in Book XI of the Aeneid, also belongs to this series. Wood Ruby dates these drawings circa 1615, and points out not only that they constitute the most extensive series of Aeneid illustrations since Sebastian Brandt's of 1502, but also that the rhymed Dutch paraphrasing of Virgil's text that appears below the images does not correspond with any published translation of the original, and may indeed represent Vrancx's own attempt at a new translation.