The Contest between Apollo and Pan

…; sale, Michiel van Hoeken, Theodoor Hartsoeker (1696-1740/41) and Dirk ter Hoeve, The Hague (auction house not known), 1 May 1742, no. 7 (‘Het Oordeel van Midas door Clerk, vol Beelden en Bywerk, het beste van hem bekent, h. l. v 5 d., br. 2 v. [44.5 x 62.8 cm]’), fl. 305;¹¹G. Hoet, Catalogus of Naamlyst van Schilderyen, met derzelver Pryzen Zedert een langen reeks van Jaaren zoo in Holland als op andere Plaatzen in het openbaar verkogt. Benevens een Verzamelingvan Lysten van Verscheyden nog in wezen zynde Cabinetten , 3 vols., The Hague 1752-70, II, p. 54.…; ? Hendrik van Heteren (1672-1749), The Hague;²²T.L.J. Verroen, ‘‘Een verstandig ryk Man’: de achttiende-eeuwse verzamelaar Adriaan Leonard Van Heteren’, in C. Scheffer (ed.) et al., Achttiende-eeuwse kunst in de Nederlanden, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 4 (1985), pp. 17-61, esp. pp. 17, 58, note 8. his son Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800), The Hague, (‘Het Oordeel van Midas, tusschen Apollo en Pan door Sebastiaan Le Clerq en de Fluweele Bruegel, h. 17. d., br. 24 d. [44.5 x 62.8 cm], K’);³³‘Catalogus van Schilderyen, In’t Kabinet van den Heer Bewindhebber, Adriaen Leonard van Heteren in’s Hage’, in G. Hoet, Catalogus of Naamlyst van Schilderyen, met derzelver Pryzen Zedert een langen reeks van Jaaren zoo in Holland als op andere Plaatzen in het openbaar verkogt. Benevens een Verzamelingvan Lysten van Verscheyden nog in wezen zynde Cabinetten, 3 vols., The Hague 1752-70, II, p. 453. his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam, (‘Le Clerq. Répresentant Le Jugement de Midas qui préfère le chant de Dieur Pan sur celui d Apollon, cuivre h. 17 l. 23½ pouces [46 x 49.5 cm]’);⁴⁴‘Catalogue Raisonné d’une Collection de Tableaux appartenant à Monsieur A.L. Gevers, Page de Leurs Majestés le Roi et la Reine de Hollande’, s.l. 1808, transcribed in E.W. Moes and E. van Biema, De Nationale Konst-Gallery en Het Koninklijk Museum, Amsterdam 1909, pp. 145-51, esp. p. 146, no. 22. from whom, fl. 100,000, with 136 other paintings en bloc (known as the ‘Kabinet van Heteren Gevers’), to the museum, by decree of Lodewijk Napoleon King of Holland, and through the mediation of his father Dirk Cornelis Gevers (1763-1839), 8 June 1809⁵⁵T.L.J. Verroen, ‘‘Een verstandig ryk Man’: de achttiende-eeuwse verzamelaar Adriaan Leonard Van Heteren’, in C. Scheffer (ed.) et al., Achttiende-eeuwse kunst in de Nederlanden, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 4 (1985), pp. 17-61, esp. p. 17, and p. 58, notes 2 and 3.

ObjectNumber: SK-A-621

Correctly described as ‘The Judgement of Midas’ in the eighteenth century and in the Koninklijk Museum catalogue of 1809, the subject of this painting was given as the Contest between Apollo and the Satyr Marsyas in all the Rijksmuseum catalogues between 1903 and 1992. But it certainly does not portray the contest of Apollo and Marsyas which is briefly described by Ovid in Metamorphoses VI:382-86. Honders pointed out in a letter to the museum in 1985 (as was further elaborated by Smeets in 1991), that the scene illustrates Metamorphoses XI:146-79 which recounts how Midas, King of Phrygia, having been released from his wish that everything he touched be turned to gold, prompted a musical contest between the half-goat Pan, god of the woods and shepherds, and Apollo, the sun god. Pan wearing a wreath of pine needles, having played his pipes, gesticulates vaingloriously as Apollo, wearing a laurel crown and inspired by the goddess Minerva, plays not the lyre – as specified in Ovid’s text – but a viola da braccia. Wearing a crown of oak leaves, Tmolus, the judge and eponymous god of the mountain on which the contest took place, turns towards Apollo, as does Midas, who displays his stupidity by showing his preference for Pan’s playing. Apollo punished him by awarding him ‘the ears of a sluggard ass’ depicted growing up alongside his crown.²⁰²⁰Ovid, Metamorphoses, with an English translation by F. Justus Miller, revised by G.P. Goold, 2 vols., (ed. princ. 1916, reprint Cambridge (Mass.)/London 19940), II, XI:177-79 (p. 133 for the translation).

The Rijksmuseum picture was already recognized as a work of collaboration in the Van Heteren catalogue of 1752 – where the wrong [De] Clerck was mistakenly specified and the landscape was attributed to Jan Brueghel I – yet its authorship has only recently been established. In the modern era, while Hendrik de Clerck has been long associated with it, the identity of his collaborator – Denis van Alsloot (1570-1626) – was first hinted at by Smeets,²¹²¹M. Smeets, ‘Apollo en Marsyas of Apollo en Pan?’, Kunstlicht 12 (1991), pp. 28-31, esp. p. 28. For Denis van Alsloot, see Laureyssens in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich/Leipzig 1983-, II, pp. 369-72. and then accepted by Laureyssens.²²²²Laureyssens in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich/Leipzig 1983-, II, p. 370. And indeed The Contest of Apollo and Pan is evidently the work of these two artists. The core, but not definitive number of twenty-one such joint productions, eight of which are dated 1608-12, was published by Laureyssens in 1967.²³²³W. Laureyssens, ‘De samenwerking van Hendrik de Clerck en Denijs van Alsloot’, Bulletin der Koninklijk Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België/Bulletin Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique 16 (1967), pp. 163-78, pp. 174-76. Noteworthy is Minerva’s helmet as it is set askew on her head.

The picture is likely to have been executed around 1610-15 as there are formal similarities with another work of the same subject, dated 1611, on the Munich art market in 1967²⁴²⁴W. Laureyssens, ‘De samenwerking van Hendrik de Clerck en Denijs van Alsloot’, Bulletin der Koninklijk Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België/Bulletin Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique 16 (1967), pp. 163-78, p. 168, fig. 4. and with a Rest on the Flight into Egypt of the same date, on the London art market in 1990, which includes two angels similar to the putti about to endow Apollo with the victor’s crown.²⁵²⁵ M. Royo-Villanova, ‘Tres Sagradas Familias de Hendrick de Clerck, Desconocidas, en Medina de Pomar (Burgos), en Tepozotlan (Mexico) y en Villamanta (Madrid)’, Archivo Español de Arte 63 (1990), pp. 157-70, esp. p. 166, fig. 11 (detail). However, in both these works the landscape is far more extensive and the figures are smaller in proportion. In this respect, the present picture is reminiscent of the two artists’ earlier collaborative efforts; that being so there is also an affinity in the rendering of the figures with those in the Four Elements of 1613.²⁶²⁶Signed and dated by both artists, anonymous sale, London (Sotheby’s), 5 December 2007, no. 16.

De Clerck may have been inspired by Hendrik Goltzius’s (1558-1617) print of 1590,²⁷²⁷W.L. Strauss (ed.), Hendrik Goltzius 1558-1617: The Complete Engravings and Woodcuts, 2 vols., New York 1977, II, no. 285. where the muses are introduced as part of the enactment. De Clerck depicts only seven women, three of whom hold trumpets and one a book, so they might be identified as Euterpe (music), Calliope (epic poetry), Polyhymnia (heroic hymns), and Clio (history). But as there are not nine female figures, De Clerck’s intentions remain unclear; perhaps he may have introduced the seven for decorative reasons only. The three who hold trumpets might be doing so in readiness of celebrating Pan’s likely victory of which he had boasted, as McGrath has kindly suggested.²⁸²⁸Private communication.

De Clerck’s composition is far more static than that of Goltzius, and it may be that, in this respect, he was influenced by Raphael’s Parnassus, as engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi (c. 1480-1527/1534), from whose print²⁹²⁹W.L. Strauss (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, New York 1978-, XXVII, p. 244, no. 247. De Clerck borrowed the pose of Apollo. It may be too that he was influenced by late maniera painting in Rome such as Jacopo Zucchi’s Coral Fishing (Galleria Borghese)³⁰³⁰P. della Pergola, Galleria Borghese: I dipinti, 2 vols., Rome 1955-59, II, pp. 58-59, no. 85 (with a different title). which was probably painted about the time when De Clerck was there.

Van Cauteren has suggested that in the personage of Apollo De Clerck intended an allusion to the Archduke, Albert of Austria (1559-1621), co-sovereign with his wife, Isabella Clara Eugenia (1566-1633), of the Netherlands.³¹³¹K. van Cauteren, Politics as Painting: Hendrik de Clerck (1560-1630) and the Archducal Enterprise of Empire, Tielt 2016, pp. 96-108. Indeed the god is here endowed with an aureole and is thus configured as Phoebus Apollo, the sun god with whom sovereigns – the archduke being no exception – were often rhetorically associated. Apollo is advised in his successful conduct of the contest by his twin sister the powerful Minerva, goddess of wisdom. That the red and white plumes which decorate her helmet are the colours of the House of Austria may therefore not be fortuitous, but the meaning of the allegory, if such was indeed intended, still requires clarification.

The unusual use of gold leaf as a second ground has been so far detected in several seventeenth-century northern Netherlandish paintings on copper, the earliest of which are three Rembrandts executed before 1630 – the Mauritshuis Laughing Man, the Stockholm Self Portrait, and the Salzburg Artist’s Mother.³²³²I. Horovitz, ‘The Materials and Techniques of European Paintings on Copper Supports’, in M.K. Komanecky et al., Copper as Canvas: Two Centuries of Masterpiece Paintings on Copper, 1575-1775, Phoenix (Art Museum)/Kansas City (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 1998-99, pp. 63-92, esp. p. 79 and I. Horovitz, ‘Paintings on Copper: A Brief Overview of their Conception, Creation and Conservation’, in L. Fuster López et al. (eds.), Paintings on Copper and Other Metal Plates: Production, Degradation and Conservation Issues, Valencia 2017, p. 21; see also J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, I, The Hague 1982, no. B6, B.5 and A.27, and E. van de Wetering, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, IV: The Portraits, The Hague 2005, no. I.B6, p. 627, and I.B5, p. 602. The reason for it remains uncertain.³³³³I. Horovitz, ‘The Materials and Techniques of European Paintings on Copper Supports’, in M.K. Komanecky et al., Copper as Canvas: Two Centuries of Masterpiece Paintings on Copper, 1575-1775, Phoenix (Art Museum)/Kansas City (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 1998-99, pp. 63-92, esp. p. 68. It seems unlikely that De Clerck invented this particular method of preparation in the southern Netherlands; other earlier examples may yet come to light.

Gregory Martin, 2022

Laureyssens in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich/Leipzig 1983-, II, p. 370; Sapori in ibid, XIX, p. 522

1809, p. 14, no. 57 (as Clerq (le), Judgement of Midas); 1886, p. 114, no. 516d; 1903, p. 72, no. 695 (as Hendrick de Clerck, Contest between Apollo and Marsyas); 1934, p. 71, no. 695 (as Hendrick de Clerck); 1976, p. 169, no. A 621 (as Hendrick de Clerck II); 1992, p. 47, no. A 621 (as Hendrick de Clerck II, Contest between Apollo and Pan)

G. Martin, 2022, 'Hendrik de Clerck and Denis van Alsloot, The Contest between Apollo and Pan, c. 1600 - c. 1615', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8145