Lot 21
  • 21

Claude Gellée, called Claude Lorrain Chamagne, Lorraine 1604/5 (?) - 1682 Rome

Estimate
300,000 - 350,000 USD
bidding is closed

Description

  • Claude Gellée, called Claude Lorrain
  • landscape with the nymph egeria mourning over numa
  • signed and dated in pen and brown ink: Claudio gillé f. Roma 1667
  • pen and brown ink and wash and black chalk heightened with white (partly oxidized)

Provenance

John Rutson (L.1517)

Exhibited

Barnard Castle, Bowes Museum, French Art of the 17th and 18th Centuries from Northern Collections, 1965, no.15, reproduced (incorrectly dated 1663) 

Literature

M. Kitson, The Age of Baroque, 1966, fig. 50;
M. Röthlisberger, Claude Lorrain, The Drawings, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1968, vol. I, no. 983b, reproduced vol. II, fig.1131l. 

 

Catalogue Note

This finished study by Claude is related to the painting now in Capodimonte, Naples (fig.1; see M. Röthlisberger Claude Lorrain, The Paintings, London 1961, vol. II, fig. 284).  The painting, which is dated 1669, was executed for Prince Colonna and, as Röthlisberger suggests, was most probably a pendant to the Landscape with Bacchus at the Palace of the dead Staphlyus, now in the Pallavicini Collection, Rome (see Röthlisberger, op.cit., 1961, vol. II, fig. 291).  The present drawing is close to the composition of the painting, but not identical.  Although the figures and the buildings are generally similar, they differ in numerous details: for instance, the symbolic column of the Colonna family which appears to the right in the painting is omitted from the drawing. 

The subject, taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses, is the lamentation of the nymph Egeria for her deceased husband Numa, as nymphs and the goddess try in vain to console her.  Egeria was so disconsolate at the death of Numa that she melted into tears and was changed by Diana into a fountain.  Ovid placed the scene near the Temple of Diana at Lake Nemi.  The classical buildings do evoke the ancient city of Nemi and there is also a parallel, as suggested by Röthlisberger, with the town of Marino, above Lake Albano, which had belonged to the Colonna family since 1419.  Therefore the setting of the drawing is not wholly imaginary, but is based on the combination of the Temple of Diana at Lake Nemi and the feudo of Marino, becoming a celebration of the Colonna family and its link, via Numa, with the kings and history of ancient Rome.  Other drawings are known which relate to this composition.  Röthlisberger lists three earlier studies of Nemi done in preparation for the painting: the first (Rome, Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe) is a view taken from the supposed site of the Temple of Diana; the second (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett), shows a view taken from the south side of Nemi; the third (Rotterdam, Boijmans-Van Beuningen Museum) is a view of the lake and city, which is an intermediary stage between the first two drawings and the painting (see Röthlisberger, op.cit. 1968, vol. I, nos. 982-983a, vol. II, reproduced).  A further study, also dated 1669, is for the group of five figures, but they differ in details both from the present drawing and from the final painting (see Röthlisberger, op.cit, 1968, vol. I, no. 984, vol. II, reproduced ). 

The composition of the painting is recorded in the Liber Veritatis, no. 175 (see Röthlisberger, op.cit, 1968,  vol. I, no. 985, vol. II, reproduced).  A further drawing at Holkham Hall of the same composition is dated Roma 1670 (see Röthlisberger, op.cit, 1968,  vol. I, no. 986, vol. II, reproduced).  Because of its date, Röthlisberger considers that version, one of the largest of Claude's drawings, to be a record of the finished painting.