Bacchus Finds Ariadne on Naxos

Direct cast. Most of the details were fashioned in the wax, and the work is, in general, very carefully finished. The texture and the brocade pattern in the bed hangings and the other fabrics, the satyr’s furry legs and the shaded areas of the architectural elements in the background were made with a very fine punch. The angular profile of the join of the figures to the base and a fingerprint – both on the back of the relief – attest to the fact that it was modeled directly. There is a rectangular patch (repair) on Bacchus’ hip. Covered with a natural yellowish-brown patina covered with a dark, warm brown lacquer.
Alloy tin bronze with some lead; copper with some impurities (Cu 84.31%; Zn 0.99%; Sn 11.22%; Pb 1.40%; Sb 0.54%; As 0.15%; Fe 0.30%; Ni 0.49%; Ag 0.05%).
Alloy patch Bacchus’s hip tin bronze with some zinc; copper with some impurities (Cu 88.19%; Zn 1.25%; Sn 8.51%; Pb 0.91%; Sb 0.44%; As 0.15%; Fe 0.13%; Ni 0.18%; Ag 0.05%).

R. van Langh in F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, no. 37 on p. 166; F. Bewer, ‘‘Kunststück von gegossenem Metall’, Adriaen de Vries’s Bronze Technique’, in F. Scholten et al., Adriaen de Vries 1556-1626: Imperial Sculptor, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Stockholm (Nationalmuseum)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 1998-2000, pp. 64-77, esp. pp. 73-74

The patina has sustained wear in some areas.

…; ? Kunstkammer Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612), Prague;¹¹Possibly to be identified as Ain tafl von metal, so aine schlafende Venus (A plate of metal, a sleeping Venus) in the 1619 inventory of his Kunstkammer, see G. Kugler et al., Prag um 1600: Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II., exh. cat. Essen (Villa Hügel)/Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum) 1988, no. 540. ? looted by Swedish troops, 26 July 1648; ? transferred to the Swedish Crown, Queen Christina I of Sweden (1626-1689), Stockholm;²²Possibly to be identified as a wax (!) relief mentioned in the 1642 inventory of Queen Christina I of Sweden: De Prague. Un tableau representant en cire une femme endormie avec un cupidon. O. Granberg, Svenska konstsamlingarnas historia fran Gustav Vasas tid till vara dagar, vol. 1, Stockholm 1929, p. 208, no. 19. However, this could also allude to an unknown wax cast. ? her son, King Carl X Gustav of Sweden (1622-1660), 1654;³³For the reconstruction of the following provenance see B. Martinius et al., Skattkammaren på Läckö, coll. cat. Stockholm (Nationalmuseum) 2006, pp. 33-34, 36 and written communication Magnus Olausson, 1 August 2009. ? his wife, Hedvig Eleonora van Holstein-Gottorp (1636-1715), 1660; ? her private councilor Count Johan Gabriel Stenbock (1640-1705), Stockholm; ? bequeathed to Stina Lillie (1677-1727), Stockholm; ? her daughter, Ulla Sparre (1711-1768), Castle Åkerö in Bettna, married to Count Carl Gustav Tessin (1695-1770), documented in 1735 and 1761;⁴⁴He described the relief in his 1735 diary as ett naketqwinfolck och tvenne två karlar (a naked woman and two men) and in his 1761 as Tarquin et Lucrèce bas relief I bronze af Jean de Boulogne (a bronze bas-relief of Tarquin and Lucretia by Giambologna), see B. Martinius et al., Skattkammaren på Läckö, coll. cat. Stockholm (Nationalmuseum) 2006, pp. 33-34, 36 and notes 19-20. ? from whom acquired by Georg Brander, London, April 1763;⁵⁵B. Martinius et al., Skattkammaren på Läckö, coll. cat. Stockholm (Nationalmuseum) 2006, p. 36. …; presented to the museum by the N.V. Internationale Antiquitei­tenhandel, Amsterdam (I. Rosenbaum) to celebrate the museum’s 50th anniversary, 1935

ObjectNumber: BK-14692

Credit line: Gift of Kunsthandel N.V. Internationale Antiquiteitenhandel

In this relief Adriaen de Vries (1556-1626) depicted a scene from the story of Ariadne and Bacchus that comes from the Eikones (Imagines) by Philostratus the Elder. He chose the moment when Bacchus, guided by a torch-bearing satyr, finds the sleeping Ariadne in her bed on the island of Naxos. The young, nude god comes racing out of the dark and pulls aside the bed curtain.

As he so often did, De Vries chose to depict the peripateia – the exciting turning point in the story. The discovery of Ariadne by the god was to lead to a profound love – an event to which the little cupid who sits by the bed is undoubtedly pointing. The owl beside him is the symbol of the night; Ariadne’s slippers are a symbolic reference to her female power. The choice of a bedchamber as the scene of the action rather than the open air is a notable break with the pictorial tradition. In fact, the sculptor reverted for this setting to a pictorial formula that was much employed by the northern Mannerists for some classical stories of the gods, such as Vulcan surprising the adulterous Mars and Venus in bed, Jupiter and Danaë or Amor and Psyche. Parallels can be shown with Hendrick Goltzius’s print Mars and Venus of 1588 (RP-P-1893-A-17928), after an invention by Bartholomeus Spranger. Ariadne’s pose, in contrast, is a subtle reworking of Giambologna’s reclining nymph.⁶⁶C. Avery, Giambologna: The Complete Sculpture, London 1993, no. 63. The relief’s overall composition bears a striking number of similarities to Correggio’s renowned Venus and Cupid with a Satyr painted for the Gonzaga family (c. 1528).⁷⁷A. Bevilacqua and A.C. Quintavalle, L’opera completa del Correggio, Milan 1970, no. 72. The sculptor may have studied this work during his time in Italy.

The most important innovation that De Vries permitted himself with regard to his predecessors is the introduction of the dynamic Bacchus dominating the picture. His prominent diagonal position brings powerful baroque drama to the scene. This concentrates everything in the composition on the moment of the discovery of Ariadne.

The Amsterdam bronze can be dated to around 1611 on the grounds of stylistic similarities to the relief of Rudolph II as Patron of the Arts in Bohemia,⁸⁸Royal Collections, Windsor Castle, see F. Scholten et al., Adriaen de Vries 1556-1626: Imperial Sculptor, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Stockholm (Nationalmuseum)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 1998-2000, no. 23. which is dated 1609, and with the Forge of Vulcan in Munich, which dates from 1611.⁹⁹Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, inv. no. 69/57.1-2, see F. Scholten et al., Adriaen de Vries 1556-1626: Imperial Sculptor, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Stockholm (Nationalmuseum)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 1998-2000, no. 27. In terms of composition, the 1610 silver relief of Mercury and Argos by Paulus van Vianen (BK-NM-8338-B) and Nicolaus Pfaff’s ivory relief of Danaë, which must have been made before 1612, are closely linked to De Vries’s relief,¹⁰¹⁰Lyon, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, see F. Scholten et al., Adriaen de Vries 1556-1626: Imperial Sculptor, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Stockholm (Nationalmuseum)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 1998-2000, p. 184, fig. 26b. although they lack the drama and dynamism of his bronze. Unclear is who influenced whom, although the probability is that the more complex composition by De Vries is based on that of his confreres. In any case, the similarities demonstrate the interest in compositions like these among court artists in Prague around 1610.

Even though the style, dating and erotic theme of the relief point to Emperor Rudolph II as the patron, the work does not appear in the inventory of the imperial Kunstkammer for 1607-11, or in later inventories. Leithe-Jasper suggested the possibility that the relief is identical to the Ain tafl von metal, so eine schlafende Venus (A plate of metal, a sleeping Venus) in the Prague inventory of 1619.¹¹¹¹G. Kugler et al., Prag um 1600: Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II., 2 vols., exh. cat. Essen (Villa Hügel)/Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum) 1988, no. 540. This is further supported by the recent discovery of the relief’s documentation in two inventories of the extensive art collection of Carl Gustav Tessin.¹²¹²B. Martinius et al., Skattkammaren på Läckö, coll. cat. Stockholm (Nationalmuseum) 2006, pp. 33-34, 36. This count was married to Ulla Sparre, who had received works of art originating from Rudolph’s Kunstkammer – including several reliefs by Adrian de Vries – from her mother, Stina Lillie. Among these was the relief portrait of the emperor (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London) and the aforementioned relief of Rudolph II Protects the Liberal Arts in Bohemia (now in the Royal Collections, Windsor Castle).¹³¹³F. Scholten et al., Adriaen de Vries 1556-1626: Imperial Sculptor, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Stockholm (Nationalmuseum)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 1998-2000, nos. 18, 23. Lillie was the universal heir of Johan Gabriel Stenbock, who is known to have acquired a number of the pieces stolen from Prague via the Swedish crown.

The Amsterdam bronze dates from the same period as the Forge of Vulcan from 1611 in Munich. Because the two reliefs moreover stem from the same period and have a thematic connection – in both cases a Greek god and Amor play leading parts – we cannot rule out the possibility that they belonged to a single ensemble. That the two do not have precisely the same format does not need to be a drawback in supposing a relationship. The two large allegorical reliefs dedicated to Emperor Rudolph II also differ in size; in their day, however, they were nevertheless considered to be pendants.¹⁴¹⁴F. Scholten et al., Adriaen de Vries 1556-1626: Imperial Sculptor, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Stockholm (Nationalmuseum)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 1998-2000, nos. 18 and 23. Finally, the compositional mirroring also supports the suggestion of a formal connection between the Amsterdam and the Munich relief – Bacchus, as it were, recurs in reverse in the right hand figure in the Vulcan relief, as a result of which both works are in a certain sense connected compositionally. If the two bronzes were indeed meant for a larger ensemble, it could have been a series of four or five reliefs devoted to classical gods as symbols of the Five Senses or the Four Seasons. Bacchus and Vulcan, for example, occur as representations of Autumn and Winter respectively on Van der Schardt’s gilt bronze table fountain that was made for Emperor Maximilian II around 1570 and later came into the possession of Emperor Rudolph.¹⁵¹⁵V. Krahn (ed.), Von allen Seiten schön: Bronzen der Renaissance und des Barock, exh. cat. Berlin (Staatliche Museen, Skulpturensammlung) 1995, nos. 94-97.

Frits Scholten, 2005 (updated by Bieke van der Mark in 2024)
This entry was originally published in F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, no. 37

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 205, with earlier literature; L.O. Larsson, ‘Bildahuerkunst und Plastik am Hofe Rudolf II.’, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 1 (1982), pp. 211-35, esp. p. 214; G. Kugler et al., Prag um 1600: Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II., exh. cat. Essen (Villa Hügel)/Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum) 1988, no. 540; S. Heiberg, Christian IV and Europe, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 1988, no. 1107; G. Luijten et al., Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art 1580-1620, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1993-94, no. 181; F. Scholten et al., Adriaen de Vries 1556-1626: Imperial Sculptor, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Stockholm (Nationalmuseum)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 1998-2000, no. 26; J. Kiers et al., The Glory of the Golden Age: Dutch Art of the 17th Century: Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Art, Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2000, no. 1; Scholten in J.P. Filedt-Kok et al., Netherlandish Art in the Rijksmuseum 1600-1700, Amsterdam/Zwolle 2001, no. 2; Scholten in F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, no. 37; B. Martinius et al., Skattkammaren på Läckö, coll. cat. Stockholm (Nationalmuseum) 2006, pp. 33-34, 36 and notes 19-20; M. Philipp et al., Dionysos: Rausch und Ekstase, exh. cat. Hamburg (Bucerius Kunst Forum)/Dresden (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden) 2013-14, p. 11; F. Scholten et al., Het wonder van Adriaen de Vries: Van ons allemaal sinds 2014, The Hague 2015, pp. 30, 42, 67

F. Scholten, 2024, 'Adriaen de Vries, Bacchus Finds Ariadne on Naxos, Prague, c. 1611', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24490