Lot 24: NICOLAUS KNUPFER LEIPZIG 1603/9 - 1655 UTRECHT

ARRIA AND PAETUS (OR THE DEATH OF VIRGINIA)

ARRIA AND PAETUS (OR THE DEATH OF VIRGINIA)

measurements note
80.9 by 117.8 cm.; 31 7/8 by 46 3/8 in.

signed lower left: NKnupfer (NK in ligature)
Inscribed in gold, emanating from the mouth of the heroine: PAETE NON DOLET.

oil on oak panel

PROVENANCE

Dr. M.J. Binder, Berlin, before 1913 (and still in 1938, according to Kuznetzow, under Literature);
Thence by descent until recently;
T. Bohm, Paris.

LITERATURE

Archiv für Kunstgeschichte, vol. I, 1913, reproduced fig. 9;
S.J. Gudlaugsson, Ikonographische Studien über die holländische Malerei und das Theater des. 17. Jahrhunderts, Würzburg 1938, pp. 65-8;
J.L. Kuznetzov, "Nikolaus Knüpfer (Biographie, thèmes et sources de la création artistique, catalogue des oeuvres)", in Trudy Gosudarstvennogo Ermitaza/Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Ermitage, vol. VIII, no. 3, 1964, no. 124;
J.L. Kuznetzov, "Nikolaus Knüpfer (1603?-1655)", in Oud Holland, vol. 88, no. 3, 1974, p. 201, no. 124;
E. Moorman & W. Uitterhieve, Van Achilleus tot Zeus: thema's uit de klassieke mythologie in literatuur, muziek, beeldende kunst en theater, Nijmegen 1989, p. 240;
J. Saxton, Nicolaus Knüpfer. An Original Artist. Monograph and Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings and Drawings, Doornspijk 2005, no. 71, reproduced fig. 71, and in colour plate XXV.

NOTE

Nicolaus Knupfer (or Knüpfer) was one of the most original of Northern European 17th-century painters. He was eclectic both in his choice of subjects and in his choice of influences. He was one of very few artists active in The Netherlands to be directly influenced by the work of Adam Elsheimer, whose works he probably knew via his townsman Hendrick Goudt. He was influenced by the Dutch Mannerists, and in particular by his teacher in Utrecht, Abraham Bloemaert, whose swirling contorted figural forms Knupfer transposed into his own more modern, ordered compositions. Finally, he was profoundly influenced by the Pre-Rembrandtists, who were also attracted to unfamiliar Old Testament and Classical subjects.

Knupfer's marked taste for arcane subject matter from Antiquity is well exemplified by the present picture. It has generally been assumed that the subject is The Death of Virginia, taken from Book III of Livy's The Early History of Rome, in which the heroine Virginia is bleeding to death, clasping the dagger with which her father, Verginius, has stabbed her in order to prevent the legislator Appius Claudius from taking her as his concubine and denying her her freedom. Gudlaugsson noticed that Knupfer's present depiction is an almost direct transcription of a scene from the play Virginia's Treurspeel by Abraham Mildert, published in 1618.¹ More recently however, Jo Saxton has suggested that the subject is Arria consoling her husband Paetus that dying is not painful ("Dolor")². This is consistent with the inscription emanating from the dying heroine's mouth, which appears not to be, as Dr. Saxton and others had supposed, a later addition. This extremely rare subject is taken from Book 7 of Pliny. Arria (or Aria) was the wife of Paetus Cecinna, a Roman senator from Padua, who was accused of conspiracy against Claudius. she stabbed herself, and handed the sword to her husband, who followed her example. The action is supposed however to have taken place at sea, and the possibility remains that Knupfer originally intended the subject to be the Death of Virginia.

The translucent brown paint in the background is not due to over-cleaning, and appears to be how Knüpfer left it. What his intentions were in doing so is unclear, since most of the figures, and all of the principal figures are fully finished, albeit with Knupfer's virtuoso peremptory brushwork. He may have failed to finish the background, or he may have intended it to appear as it does today, although the background will have become more translucent with age. There are other examples of paintings by Knupfer with unfinished or semi-finished backgrounds; for example his Moses Drawing Water from the Rock in a German private collection and his Death of Lucretia in Leipzig³]^. Jo Saxton's most recent view is that he intended the picture to be finished by one of his collaborators, such as Abraham van Cuylenborch⁴. That is is signed however does clearly suggest as Saxton confirms that Knupfer considered his work on the picture to be completed.

1. See Gudlaugsson, under Literature.
2. Private communication
3. See Saxton, op. cit., pp. 104-5, and 155, cat. nos. 6 and 62, both reproduced in colour, plates I and XIX.
4. Private communication