Leda with her children (Giampietrino)

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Kneeling Leda with her children (Giampietrino)
Leda kneeling with her children
Giampietrino , 1515/20
Oil on alder wood
128 × 105.5 cm
Old Masters Picture Gallery, Kassel (Inv.GK 966)

Leda kneeling with her children is a Renaissance painting by the Leonardo da Vinci student Giampietrino . The painting is part of the collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel .

classification

The origins of the painting go back to studies by Leonardo da Vinci on a no longer preserved painting , which are now in Windsor Castle , in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and in the English country castle Chatsworth House .

The beautiful king's daughter Leda is seduced by Zeus , who approaches her in the form of a swan. That same night she sleeps with her husband Tyndareos . From this connection arise two pairs of twins, the beautiful Helena and the immortal Dioscuri Polydeukes as descendants of Zeus and Clytaimnestra and the mortal Dioscuri Castor as descendants of Tyndareus, King of Sparta. While the swan is left out in the Kassel painting, the eggshells from which the children hatch testify to the divine liaison.

During investigations with the help of infrared reflectography, two signatures were discovered: a signature of Leda with her children , which corresponds to the later version, and an exact signature after Leonardo's St. Anna Selbdritt (Louvre), applied using the spolvero technique . This proves the existence of an Anna Selbdritt cardboard box that has been lost today. It is unclear whether Leda and her children can be traced back to a missing cardboard box from Leonardo's. The Venus Doidalses could have served as a model . The figurative part with a monumental and central effect of the Leda was carried out by Giampietrino around 1515/20. The Nordic landscape with its rich details comes from the landscape painter Cesare Bernazzano , who also added landscapes to other Leonardo da Vinci students' paintings. The very vividly reproduced figures with complex torsion of the body of the kneeling Leda form a striking contrast to the distant landscape, which is represented with the perspective means of the aerial perspective .

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe admired the picture in Kassel in 1779, 1783, 1792 and 1801 as a painting by Leonardo da Vinci.

Provenance

The painting was bought at an auction in 1756 by Landgrave Wilhelm VIII of Hessen-Kassel, believing that the painting was a representation of Caritas by Leonardo da Vinci, since a child and the eggshells had been painted over by someone else's hand. In coalition war Elector Wilhelm I to defend against the advancing French troops of the painting in 1806 Grande Armée in the Sababurg bring. However, the hiding place was betrayed and General Joseph Lagrange confiscated the painting as spoils of war. The picture was never to reach its destination, Malmaison Castle , the seat of Empress Joséphine . The masterpiece was lost in the chaos of war and only reappeared in private Paris in 1821. The Mannheim art dealer Dominik Artaria offered the painting to Elector Wilhelm I for repurchase, but he strictly refused the offer. The Belgian painter and art dealer Pierre Joseph Lafontaine made it into the art collection of King Wilhelm II of the Netherlands in The Hague . After his collection was auctioned off in a public auction in 1850, the painting became the property of his brother Prince Frederik von Oranien Nassau and in 1883 it was bequeathed to the house of Nassau-Weilburg in Neuwied . Gauleiter Erich Koch bought the painting for 150,000 RM and gave it to Hermann Göring on January 12, 1940 for his birthday. Göring added the Leda and her children to his extensive private collection of Gothic and Renaissance nudes in Carinhall .

After the end of the Second World War , the painting was brought to the Central Collecting Point in Munich and then placed under trust management. In 1962 the painting was bought back by the State of Hesse .

literature

  • Jürgen M. Lehmann: State Art Collections Kassel. Catalog 1. Italian, French and Spanish paintings from the 16th to 18th centuries. Century . Fridingen 1980, pp. 130-133.
  • Bernhard Schnackenburg: Old Masters Picture Gallery (Kassel). Complete catalog / Old Masters Picture Gallery / Kassel State Museums. 2 vol. Mainz 1996, vol. 1, p. 123.
  • Jürgen M. Lehmann: To the kneeling Leda with her children by Giampietrino in the Kassel picture gallery . In: D. Dombrowski, K. Heusing, A. Dern (eds.): Between the worlds. Contributions to art history for Jürg Meyer zur Capellen. Festschrift for the 60th birthday . Weimar 2001, pp. 92-105.

Web links

Commons : Leda with her children  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jürgen M. Lehmann: On the kneeling Leda with her children . Weimar 2001.
  2. ^ Dordrechts Museum: Willem II: kunstkoning. Accessed March 5, 2019 .