Venus in the forge of the volcano (de Clerck)
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| Venus in the forge of the volcano |
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| Hendrik de Clerck , early 17th century |
| Oil on canvas |
| 148.5 x 206.5 cm |
| Simferopol State Art Museum |
Venus in the forge of the volcano is a painting by the Brussels painter Hendrik de Clerck . It was in the possession of the Aachen Suermondt Museum until the end of World War II and was then considered lost in the West. In 2008 it was revealed that it had been transported to the Crimea as looted art .
description
Is represented Venus in the company of Cupid in the workshop of the blacksmith god Vulcan . The picture is divided into different levels. The left half is occupied by Venus, who, accompanied by Cupid, leans naked except for a few pieces of jewelry and a fold drapery in the foreground against a rock or other landscape element that seems to be partly overgrown by plants. She is supported on her right elbow and left foot, while the toes of her right foot play in the air and her left hand, raised in a casual gesture, holds an arrow from Cupid, the tip of which points downwards. The little god of love sits dangling and bellied to her right, holds his bow, the lower end of which is resting on the ground, with his right hand and grabs Venus' chest with his left. He looks up at her while Venus has lowered his gaze. The scene is observed from behind by a dark, somewhat satyr-like figure who peeks out from behind a curtain on the left edge of the picture. Two putti with flower branches hover over Venus; one of them holds a wreath over the head of Venus. To the right, this picture plane continues through a collection of metal objects draped on the floor next to Venus' feet. These are apparently tools that belong to a festive table: goblets, bowls, cutlery and a drinking cup. Separated from this and clearly further back, the individual pieces of armor and weapons are piled on the floor. Behind this collection of cutting and stabbing weapons, or rather the protection against them, one even believes to see two crossed cannon barrels on the ground. They form the transition to the pictorial plane that is reserved for Vulkan and his companions. These are much further back than Venus in a cavernous space. Vulkan and three assistants are busy forging something on an anvil ; two other men are busy with other tasks to the left and right of this scene: one seems to be filing something on a workbench in the background on the right, the other is working on a device that is perhaps to be interpreted as a bellows on the left with apparently considerable effort. Between the Venus and the volcano scene, a view of the open opens up in the background; a narrow strip of a bright landscape, perhaps also a sea beneath the sky clouds, can be seen.
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The picture is probably one of the earliest mythological depictions of de Clerck. Due to the large format, it can be assumed that it represented a special commission for the painter. Like Jan Brueghel the Elder, Hendrik de Clerck worked at the Brussels court in the early 17th century; the picture probably comes from this creative phase. There has been speculation as to whether de Clerck and Brueghel worked together on the picture and whether Jan Brueghel could have painted the still life in the foreground on the right, but this was largely rejected in research. However, there is a strong similarity to the allegory of the elements of Brueghel, which is in the Prado .
Hendrik de Clerck created another depiction of Venus, which is probably a little younger than the rather monumental painting Venus in the forge of the volcano . There you can see how she is surprised by Apollo and other gods on the love bed with Mars , while Cupid hovers over the scene this time and still holds his arrow firmly in his right fist and Vulkan, the betrayed husband, at the side of the Bettes stands and holds in his hands the net with which he held the lovers. This incident told by Ovid was a grateful subject in the visual arts. But even Venus and Vulcan alone, often in combination with the weapons that the goddess of love had made for Aeneas , were already a popular motif in de Clerck's time.
The motif of Venus in the forge of the volcano on paintings from the 16th to 18th centuries
A few decades before de Clerck, Frans Floris created a depiction of Venus in the Vulkan's workshop, which has certain parallels to de Clerck's painting: Here, too, Venus sits, playing tenderly with Cupid, on the left in the foreground, while in front of a crevice the bright landscape can be seen, the men are working in the workshop and the work pieces that have already been completed can be seen in the foreground on the right. If it can be assumed that the bearded beard, who is depicted in front of him and has to forge with a hammer, is her husband Vulkan, then a different solution is noticeable in detail compared to de Clerck: Vulkan, which was overthrown from Olympus and has damage to its legs is not fully visible; the lower half of its legs is hidden by the anvil and other objects.
Hendrik de Clerck, on the other hand, depicted the blacksmith god in full physicality and gave him a kind of prosthesis : Vulkan's left leg is angled in de Clerck's depiction and rests on a padded support that is attached below the knee and apparently in the manner of a stilted foot for standing and Walking should serve. Something similar is perhaps intended in the depiction of a Flemish painter from the circle of Jan Brueghel, who depicts Vulkan's workshop as a huge arsenal, but behind the arched architectural elements and the half or fully completed workpieces still retains the view of the open air. The group of the three main characters Venus, Amor and Vulkan has moved closer together here; Vulkan appears to be either sitting on a stool or, as with de Clerck, using an orthopedic aid.
Francesco Albani , a contemporary of de Clerck, had Venus rest in a very similar posture to this one in the left foreground and raise his left arm. Here, too, the dark foreground of the underground blacksmith's workshop contrasts with the bright view of the outside. The volcano, which cannot even be seen halfway, has moved all the way to the left of the picture.
Around 1638, David Teniers the Elder kept the tradition of looking through the rocks into the open, but instead had Venus dressed and appear from the right with Cupid, while Vulkan works standing on the left side of the scene and consequently also opens up the finished weapons and armor the left side are in the foreground.
Bartholomäus Spranger painted the couple around 1610 . Here Vulkan has left his assistants in the background and continues to work sitting down, while a seductive Venus stands behind him and puts her arm around his neck and pats his goatee. Amor watches the scene from the front with interest. Around 1630 van Dyck had Venus, with an imperious gesture, demand the weapons for her son and darling Aeneas from the volcano, who was bent over and looking up at her.
About a century and a half after de Clerk, Tiepolo painted Venus in a lascivious pose on a cloudscape, while a half-bald volcano with a cane sits across from her and admires her, half-lying on his anvil, and admires her, leaving his assistants to work in the workshop alone.
Frans Floris, Venus in the forge of Vulcan, around 1560
unknown painter from the circle of Jan Brueghel, Venus and Amor in the forge of Vulkan, 17th century
Francesco Albani, summer, around 1615
David Teniers the Elder Ä., Venus in the Vulkan's workshop, around 1638
Bartholomäus Spranger, Venus and Vulkan, around 1610
Anton van Dyck, Venus calls for weapons for Aeneas von Vulkan
Tiepolo, Venus and Vulcano, around 1760
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Provenance and whereabouts
De Clerck's picture came to the newly founded Suermondt Museum in 1883 through a foundation by Barthold Suermondt , where it was given inventory number GK 96. During the Second World War it was relocated to the Albrechtsburg in Meißen , from where it never returned. Until 2008, the employees of the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum did not know what had happened to many of his pictures that had been relocated during the war and later disappeared, nor in the catalog for the exhibition Schattengalerie. The lost works of the painting collection , which took place in 2008 and 2009, the whereabouts of the picture Venus in the forge of the volcano is described as unknown.
At that time, the director of the museum and co-initiator of this exhibition of the losses - especially old black and white photographs of the lost pictures - Peter van den Brink still radically stated: “It would be best if we had an international arrest warrant ready for each picture as soon as it appears somewhere, they could send someone off immediately. ”A little later he had to rethink: In 2008 it became known that numerous paintings that had once hung in museums in Aachen, Berlin and Dresden were now in Simferopol , including Venus in the forge of the Vulkan and dozens of other pictures from the Suermondt Museum. A Bavarian couple had visited the museum in Crimea and recognized the Aachen Cathedral in one of the pictures , whereupon they began to photograph the exhibited pictures and the attached comments. This indicated that the pictures had not yet been shown, but had apparently been in the magazine. The tourists then asked the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, which, like many other lost paintings on its website, had described de Clerck's picture as missing, whether this website would not be updated regularly, thus getting the museum's staff on the trail of over 70 paintings believed to be lost.
The museum in the Crimea is not considering returning the pictures to the Aachen Museum: Aachen experts were invited to Simferopol to identify the paintings and were also able to inspect de Clerck's picture, which was in poor condition. The head of the Ukrainian State Museum attended the Looted Art Symposium that was held in Germany in early 2009. The Duma legislation, however, regards works of art that were transported from Germany during or after World War II as a replacement for works of art that Russia lost as a result of the war. In October 2013 the negotiations had developed to the point of no longer considering the pictures as stolen. This would be the prerequisite for “looted art” images to be loaned back to Germany without being immediately confiscated there.
Despite its rediscovery in Ukraine , Venus in the forge of the volcano was reported missing in the Lost Art Internet Database at the end of 2013 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Overview of the volcano's love affairs on theoi.com
- ↑ a b Peter van den Brink (Ed.): Schattengalerie. The lost works of the painting collection. Hirmer Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7774-4305-8 , pp. 102-104.
- ↑ August Heinrich Petiscus: The Olympus; or, Mythology of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans: for self-teaching for adult youth and budding artists . JJ Mäcken, 1830, p. 61 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed January 3, 2017]).
- ↑ Collection of Ovid quotes on the Venus-Vulkan topic
- ↑ Michael F. Zimmermann, Lovis Corinth , Beck 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56935-7 , p. 68.
- ↑ Extensive speculations on the "prosthesis" use of Hephaestus can be found in Klaus Erlach: The Technotope: the technological construction of reality . LIT Verlag, Münster 2000, ISBN 3-8258-4668-7 , p. 114 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed January 3, 2017]).
- ↑ There is speculation about whether Vulkan can be seen twice in this picture.
- ↑ Brief explanation on philamuseum.org
- ^ Andreas Rossmann : "Shadow Gallery" in Aachen. A museum shows the pictures it has lost in: faz.net, September 24, 2008.
- ^ Aachen looted art: Dialogue started. There is movement in the Aachen looted art case ( memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), on: art-magazin.de, January 22, 2009.
- ↑ Lost looted art: Controversy over paintings in Ukraine , on: Spiegel online, November 7, 2008.
- ^ Aachen losses in Simferopol , on: schattengalerie.info.
- ↑ Summary of the looted art symposium in early 2009 ( memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on haus-der-literatur.com.
- ↑ Aachen Museum negotiating because of looted art in Ukraine , on: brf.be, October 29, 2013.
- ↑ lostart.de