Attributed to Bartholomäus Spranger

Rudolf Peltzer (L.2231);
Arthur Feldmann, Brno;
looted by the Gestapo during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia;
accessioned by the National Gallery, Prague, inv. nos. DK 4614 (bears their mark, verso: NGGS/PRAHA, not in Lugt);
restituted to the heirs of Arthur Feldmann in 2013

Both the recto and the verso of this intriguing, unpublished sheet pose interesting, but very different, questions.  The rather complete composition on the recto, showing various offerings being given up to Venus, corresponds to that of a print, in the same direction, made by Aegidius Sadeler, after a design by Spranger that has always been assumed to be lost.¹  There are minor differences of detail - for example the background trees seen in the print are not similarly detailed in the drawing, nor does the figure of Venus in the latter wear an armband - but the compositional correspondence is otherwise more or less exact.  The same is, however, true of another drawing by Spranger, also engraved in the same direction by Sadeler, the Venus and Cupid, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,² a drawing that has many stylistic similarities with the present work.  Also comparable is the signed Cybele and Minerva, in Düsseldorf, a drawing that Geissler dated around 1590,³ and two drawings depicting Hercules and Omphale, one in Prague, the other in Florence.⁴ 

The two separate studies on the verso are rather differently handled, with extensive red chalk underdrawing and somewhat finer, less complete penwork.  The pencil attribution to Tintoretto notwithstanding, these studies are also very clearly the product of the late 16th-century Prague milieu that had Spranger as its focal point.  Though clearly more rapidly executed, these fine studies can be compared with some of Spranger's sketchier drawings from the same period around 1590, such as the Young Artist before Minerva, in the Albertina.⁵

No paintings by Spranger can be directly linked with either of these studies, but the artist did treat the subject of The Baptism of Christ in a 1603 painting, now in Wroclaw, and the Resurrection in two paintings, both in Prague, the first of which, executed circa 1575, bears some compositional resemblance to the sudy on the present sheet.⁶ That study is also reminiscent of Hans von Aachen's drawing, in Brno, for the central panel of a major collaborative altarpiece commissioned in 1598 by the Emperor Rudolf II from his four leading court artists: Hans von Aachen, Joseph Heintz the Elder, Bartholomäus Spranger and Hans Vredeman de Vries.  Von Aachen painted the central panel, Spranger and Heintz each painted the inside of one of the wings, while Vredeman de Vries decorated the outsides.⁷ 

1.  Hollstein's Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, vol. 21, Amsterdam 1980, Aegidius Sadeler no. 110
2.  Robert Lehmann Collection, inv. 1975.1.844
3.  Kunstmuseum, inv. F.P. 4817; H. Geissler, Zeichnung in Deutschland, Deutsche Zeichner 1540-1640, exh. cat., Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, 1979-80, vol. I, pp. 56-8. no. B11
4.  Narodni Galerie, inv. K 42835; Uffizi, inv. 2362F
5.  Inv. 25437; Prag um 1600, Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Kaiser Rudolf II., exh. cat., Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1988, no. 646
6.  Prag um 1600, Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Kaiser Rudolf II., exh. cat., Essen, Villa Hügel, 1988, no. 152, reproduced
7.  Ibid., under no. 180