Mercury, Argus and Io (Metamorphoses I: 677-717)

Technical notes

Support The single, horizontally grained, quarter-sawn oak plank is approx. 0.6 cm thick at the top and approx. 1 cm at the bottom. The reverse is bevelled on all sides. At some point wooden strips (approx. 0.5 cm) were added on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1640. The panel could have been ready for use by 1649, but a date in or after 1659 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thick, creamy white ground does not extend over the edges of the support. It consists of opaque and translucent white pigment particles, with an addition of brown earth and finely ground red and orange pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint does not extend over the edges of the support. The initial composition was first broadly sketched in browns; a glimpse of this underpainting can be found at Mercury’s upper right thigh, amidst the folds of the blue robe. The paint was loosely applied from the back to the front, using reserves, and from dark to light, with the exception of the light sky. The figures and foliage were built up with thick impasto and visible brushmarking. The plant in the right foreground was rendered in detail with impasted highlights. Scratches were made in the wet paint of Mercury’s neck and collar, and of Argus’s collar. The positions of the latter’s right hand and foot were shifted. His knees were initially bare, and the foliage in the far right background was changed where it touches the leaves of the central tree.
Gwen Tauber, 2023

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: G. Tauber, RMA, 11 januari 2010
paint samples: G. Tauber, RMA, nos. SK-A-3133/1-2, 11 januari 2010
technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 11 januari 2010
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 24 september 2012

Condition

Fair. Some of the white pigment particles in the ground have become translucent as a result of saponification. There is extensive abrasion of the paint surface in most areas, especially in the cow and the sky.

Conservation

L. Sozzani, 2003: complete restoration

Provenance

...; the dealer Nicolaas Beets, Amsterdam, as Rembrandt, 1921;¹W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Wiedergefundene Gemälde (1910-1920), Stuttgart/Berlin 1921, p. XXVI, no. 12. from whom purchased by the museum, 1932

ObjectNumber: SK-A-3133

The artist

Biography

Govert Flinck (Cleves 1615 - Amsterdam 1660)

The exact date of Govert Flinck’s birth, 25 January 1615, is known from a medal issued at the time of his death. He was born into a Mennonite family of some standing in the German town of Cleves, where his father may have been a cloth merchant. According to Houbraken, the young Flinck had a fervent desire to become an artist, which his parents did their utmost to suppress until the Dutch painter and fellow Mennonite Lambert Jacobsz, who was on a preaching tour in Cleves, persuaded them to allow their son to study with him in Leeuwarden. Another of his pupils and Flinck’s ‘companion in art’ (‘gezelschap in de Konst’) was Jacob Backer, who was about seven years his senior.²A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, p. 20. Having advanced far enough to stand on their own feet, the two young artists went to Amsterdam. Although Houbraken’s text has been interpreted as meaning that they made the move at the same time, Backer is first documented there in 1633, while the earliest record of Flinck living in Amsterdam is from 1637. On 13 March of that year, he bought some prints at an auction and his address was given as the home of the art dealer Hendrick Uylenburgh. Von Sandrart informs us that after a period of study with Rembrandt, which according to Houbraken lasted only a year, Flinck ‘spent many long years with the famous art dealer Uylenburgh, with whom he left many exquisite, beautiful portraits from his own hand’.³J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), p. 194: ‘hielte sich lange Jahre auf bey dem berühmten Kunsthändler Ulenburg, dem er viel ausbündige herrliche Contrafäte von eigner Hand hinterlassen’. This chronology implies that he had already trained with Rembrandt, or was training with him, when he painted his earliest signed and dated works in 1636.⁴Shepherdess, Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum (SK-A-3451, fig. a; Bust of a Young Soldier with a Feathered Cap, Lausanne, private collection, and Portrait of Dirck Jacobsz Leeuw, Amsterdam, Verenigde Doopsgezinde Gemeente; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, p. 1090, no. 658, p. 1117, no. 685. Vestiges of Jacobsz’s style are apparent in these pictures, making Houbraken’s assertion that Flinck fully mastered Rembrandt’s manner in the year he was taught by him appear somewhat exaggerated.

Flinck’s most accomplished Rembrandtesque paintings date from the late 1630s and early 1640s. In addition to the portraits mentioned by Von Sandrart, he executed histories and landscapes while he worked for Uylenburgh. His documented clientele consisted to a large degree of fellow Mennonites, including his cousins Ameldonck and Dirck Jacobsz Leeuw. It is not known when Flinck stopped running Uylenburgh’s studio and set up shop on his own. In 1644, he purchased two houses on Lauriersgracht (nos. 76 and 78) for 10,000 guilders, installing his studio and gallery on the top floors. In the meantime, he had already received the first of three commissions for group portraits from the Amsterdam civic guard, the Portrait of the Governors of the Kloveniersdoelen of 1642;⁵SK-C-370. the other two are dated 1645 and 1648.⁶See respectively SK-C-371 and Officers and Other Civic Guardsmen of District I in Amsterdam, under the Command of Captain Joan Huydecoper and Lieutenant Frans van Waveren, Amsterdam Museum; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, p. 1149, no. 717. In the latter year he was awarded his first order from an aristocrat, an allegory for the Elector of Brandenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm von Hohenzollern.⁷Potsdam, Neues Palais; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, p. 1063, no. 631.

In June 1645 Flinck married Ingeltje Thoveling, the daughter of a vice-admiral and director of the Rotterdam branch of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Although she was a Remonstrant, it was only after her death in early 1651 that Flinck had himself baptized in her faith. He remarried in 1656, his second wife being Sophia van der Houve of Gouda. Houbraken points out that Flinck had many influential friends, including Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen, governor of Cleves, the burgomasters Cornelis and Andries de Graeff, and the art lovers Pieter and Jan Six and Joannes Wtenbogaert.

A fully-fledged Flemish Baroque style, inspired initially by Amsterdam artists who had adopted it, first appears in Flinck’s work in 1645.⁸For example SK-C-371 and Portrait of a Man, LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, p. 1132, no. 700. It is also apparent in the many important commissions Flinck received in the 1650s, which included portraits of the Elector of Brandenburg⁹1652, Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, p. 1137, no. 705. and of Johan Maurits,¹⁰This painting, which is no longer known, was engraved by Cornelis van Dalen; illustrated in F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, V, Amsterdam 1951, p. 117, no. 137. as well as the Allegory in Memory of Frederik Hendrik.¹¹SK-A-869. It may have been the trip that the artist made to Antwerp, reported by both Baldinucci and Houbraken, that encouraged him to continue down this path.

In 1656 Flinck completed the enormous Marcus Curtius Dentatus Refusing the Gifts of the Samnites for the newly built Town Hall in Amsterdam, followed in 1658 by Solomon’s Prayer for Wisdom.¹²In situ (Royal Palace, Amsterdam); illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, p. 1070, no. 638, p. 1072, no. 640. In late 1659 he was asked to paint twelve monumental canvases for the Great Gallery of the Town Hall, but Flinck died on 2 February the following year before completing any of them.

A witness stated that a number of assistants and apprentices were working in Flinck’s studio in 1649, which was probably the case in other years as well. Nevertheless, the names of only four, rather obscure pupils are known with certainty: the Düsseldorf painter Johannes Spilberg (1619-1690), who spent a few years with him in the 1640s, Johannes Buns (dates unknown), Bartholomeus Hoppfer (1628-1699) and Steven Sleger (dates unknown).

Jonathan Bikker, 2023

References
J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), p. 194; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, pp. 18-27; F. Baldinucci, Notizie de’ professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua secolo V. dal 1610. al 1670., Florence 1728, p. 484; H. Havard, L’art et les artistes hollandais, II, Paris 1880, pp. 71-174, 191-202; D.C. Meijer Jr, ‘De Amsterdamsche schutters-stukken in en buiten het nieuwe Rijksmuseum’, Oud Holland 7 (1889), pp. 45-60, esp. pp. 45, 46; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, p. 128; Hofstede de Groot in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XII, Leipzig 1916, pp. 97-100; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, IV, The Hague 1917, pp. 1254-55; J.W. von Moltke, Govaert Flinck, 1615-1660, Amsterdam 1965, pp. 9-12; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, ‘Doopsgezinden en schilderkunst in de 17e eeuw: Leerlingen, opdrachtgevers en verzamelaars van Rembrandt’, Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 6 (1980), pp. 105-23, esp. pp. 109-10; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, ‘Het “schilderhuis” van Govert Flinck en de kunsthandel van Uylenburgh aan de Lauriergracht te Amsterdam’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 74 (1982), pp. 70-90; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, pp. 998-99; W. Liedtke, ‘Rembrandt and the Rembrandt Style in the Seventeenth Century’, in W. Liedtke et al., Rembrandt/not Rembrandt in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Aspects of Connoisseurship, exh. cat. New York 1995-96, II, pp. 3-39, esp. pp. 16-20; Von Moltke in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XI, New York 1996, pp. 168-70; P. Jeroense, ‘Govaert Flinck (1615-1660): Eine Künstlerbiographie’, Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 36 (1997), pp. 73-112; Beaujean in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XLI, Munich/Leipzig 2004, pp. 240-43; W. Liedtke, ‘Rembrandt’s “Workshop” Revisited’, Oud Holland 117 (2004), pp. 48-73, esp. pp. 52, 68, 70, note 34; J. van der Veen, ‘Het kunstbedrijf van Hendrick Uylenburgh in Amsterdam: Productie en handel tussen 1625 en 1655’, in F. Lammertse and J. van der Veen, Uylenburgh en Zoon: Kunst en commercie van Rembrandt tot De Lairesse, 1625-1675, exh. cat. London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2006, pp. 117-205, esp. pp. 160-69; R. Lambour, ‘Het doopsgezind milieu van Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705) en van andere schilders in zeventiende-eeuws Amsterdam: Een revisie en ontdekking’, Oud Holland 125 (2012), pp. 193-214, esp. pp. 197-98; T. van der Molen, ‘Das Leben von Govert Flinck/The Life of Govert Flinck’, in E.-J. Goosens et al., Govert Flinck – Reflecting History, exh. cat. Cleves (Museum Kurhaus Kleve) 2015-16, pp. 10-21; E.J. Sluijter, Rembrandt’s Rivals: History Painting in Amsterdam 1630-1650, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2015, pp. 97-110

Entry

The subject of this painting is the well-known Ovidian tale of Argus’s demise at the hands of Mercury. In order to hide Io, a beautiful nymph he had seduced, from his suspicious wife Juno, Jupiter transformed her into a white heifer. Even in this form, Io looked pretty and Juno demanded her husband give the animal to her as a present. Her fears of Jupiter’s trickery not assuaged, Juno had the hundred-eyed shepherd Argus guard her gift. Jupiter could not bear Io’s captivity and ordered his son Mercury to slay Argus. By playing his reed-pipe, telling a story of the origin of the instrument and finally using a magic wand, Mercury lulled the shepherd to sleep, whereupon he decapitated him. The earliest known Dutch painting of the myth was made by Abraham Bloemaert around 1592, and the subject was popularized by Claes Moeyaert, Moyses van Wtenbrouck and Bartholomeus Breenbergh in the 1620s and ’30s.¹³E.J. Sluijter, De ‘heydensche fabulen’ in de schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw: Schilderijen met verhalende onderwerpen uit de klassieke mythologie in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, circa 1590-1670, Leiden 2000, p. 45.

The present picture was assigned to Rembrandt when it was in the possession of the Amsterdam art dealer Nicolaas Beets in 1921.¹⁴According to W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Wiedergefundene Gemälde (1910-1920), Stuttgart/Berlin 1921, p. XXVI, no. 12. Valentiner, however, put Govert Flinck forward as a possible candidate,¹⁵W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Wiedergefundene Gemälde (1910-1920), Stuttgart/Berlin 1921, p. XXVI, no. 12. an attribution that has been almost universally accepted, among others by Von Moltke, who dated the work to around 1639, and Sumowski, who favoured a date around 1645.¹⁶J.W. von Moltke, Govaert Flinck, 1615-1660, Amsterdam 1965, pp. 85-86, no. 98; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, p. 1024, no. 629. The only scholar to question Flinck’s authorship has been Bruyn, in his review of the second volume of Sumowski’s Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler.¹⁷J. Bruyn, ‘Review of W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, Landau/Pfalz 1984’, Oud Holland 101 (1987), pp. 222-34, esp. p. 226. Indeed, the composition is unlike those in the artist’s substantiated oeuvre, and the small-scale figures are not an exact match to Flinck’s in either their type or their loose brushwork and schematically rendered features. Dendrochronology has indicated that the panel was probably only available in or after 1659,¹⁸See Technical notes. which makes the attribution to Flinck himself even more dubious. In the decade before his death in February 1660, he was primarily occupied with large public commissions, and – if we can believe Houbraken – referred clients who wanted to be portrayed by him to Bartholomeus van der Helst.¹⁹See Biography; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, p. 24. So it does not seem likely that Flinck would waste his precious time on such a small easel painting.

This notwithstanding, some aspects of the present work are dependent on Flinck’s style, suggesting that the panel was executed by a follower. The striking purple and light blue draperies, for example, recall the vibrant colouring of the small-scale figures in Flinck’s 1637 Lamentation in Tokyo,²⁰The National Museum of Western Art; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, p. 1044, no. 612. and, to a lesser degree, the 1647 Crucifixion in Basel.²¹Kunstmuseum; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, p. 1062, no. 630. It is especially the rendering of the trees and bushes forming a foil behind Argus and Mercury that can be related to Flinck’s oeuvre. The way in which the central tree is constructed of an amorphous sketch in a light colour to which schematic details have been added with darker paint calls to mind the execution of the trees in a number of pictures by Flinck, the Portrait of Dirck Graswinckel and Geertruyt van Loon in particular.²²Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, p. 1145, no. 713. The stippled highlights on the leaves are closest to those in his Landscape with Obelisk, formerly in Boston.²³Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, stolen in 1990; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, p. 1151, no. 719. Finally, the acanthus in the lower right corner was a favoured motif of Flinck’s.²⁴See, for example, Portrait of a Girl as Flora in Musée d’arts de Nantes; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, p. 1077, no. 645.

A version of the Rijksmuseum Mercury, Argus and Io in Cleves has also been assigned to Flinck in the literature, but has even less to do with him than the present painting (fig. a). In their current states the widths of the two works are almost identical, while the one in Cleves is approximately 4.5 centimetres shorter. Initially, however, the latter panel may have been slightly larger than the Amsterdam picture, as examination revealed that it has probably been reduced at the top and on the right. The composition with a panoramic view on the left and a foil of bushes on the right is the same, as is the heifer and its placement, although its body and especially its head are larger in the Cleves version. The figures in that work are also larger, making the cow appear dwarfish, while the landscape has a lighter tonality and Mercury and Argus wear rather drab green and blue costumes. The execution is also tighter and does not suggest Flinck’s hand at all. These two renditions of Mercury, Argus and Io were either made by a painter who was trying on different styles, or the composition of the one in Cleves was simply copied and improved upon (at least as far as the scale of the figures is concerned) by a different artist.

The model for the two versions was a painting by Moeyaert, which can be dated in or before 1624 on the basis of an inscribed copy.²⁵Present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in A. Tümpel, ‘Claes Cornelisz. Moeyaert’, Oud Holland 88 (1974), pp. 1-163, 245-90, esp. p. 73, fig. 100, where it is considered a fragment. See ibid., p. 15, no. 7, for an illustration of the copy, which is signed ‘J. Loo’ and is assumed to reproduce Moeyaert’s original composition in its entirety. For the importance of Moeyaert’s painting for the present picture and the related work in Cleves, see E.J. Sluijter, De ‘heydensche fabulen’ in de schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw: Schilderijen met verhalende onderwerpen uit de klassieke mythologie in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, circa 1590-1670, Leiden 2000, pp. 68, 417, fig. 135, where the copy after it is mistakenly reproduced as the original. A novelty of Moeyaert’s work is that it shows the moment between Argus falling asleep and his decapitation.²⁶E.J. Sluijter, De ‘heydensche fabulen’ in de schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw: Schilderijen met verhalende onderwerpen uit de klassieke mythologie in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, circa 1590-1670, Leiden 2000, p. 46. The same point in the story is represented in the Rijksmuseum panel, where Mercury actually holds the sword at the ready, while the Cleves version depicts the more conventional, idyllic scene of Mercury lulling Argus to sleep with music. That painting is also one of the few seventeenth-century renderings of the myth in which Argus has been given more than one set of eyes. The Amsterdam picture, on the other hand, is closer to the story as it is related by Ovid, in that Mercury does not wear his tell-tale winged headgear. The artist of the Rijksmuseum Mercury, Argus and Io apparently made creative use of another image of the myth as well; Mercury’s pose is exactly the same as that of Argus in an etching of the subject by Moyses van Wtenbrouck.²⁷W.L. Strauss and C. Schuler (eds.), The Illustrated Bartsch, VI, New York 1986, p. 77, no. 22. This borrowing is pointed out in E.J. Sluijter, De ‘heydensche fabulen’ in de schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw: Schilderijen met verhalende onderwerpen uit de klassieke mythologie in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, circa 1590-1670, Leiden 2000, p. 247, note 15.

Jonathan Bikker, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Wiedergefundene Gemälde (1910-1920), Stuttgart/Berlin 1921, p. XXVI, no. 12 (as possibly Govert Flinck); J.W. von Moltke, Govaert Flinck, 1615-1660, Amsterdam 1965, pp. 21, 85-86, no. 98 (as Govert Flinck); W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, Landau Pfalz 1984, pp. 1000, 1002, 1024, no. 629 (as Govert Flinck), with earlier literature; J. Bruyn, ‘Review of W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, Landau Pfalz 1984’, Oud Holland 101 (1987), pp. 222-34, esp. p. 233, note 29; E.J. Sluijter, De ‘heydensche fabulen’ in de schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw: Schilderijen met verhalende onderwerpen uit de klassieke mythologie in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, circa 1590-1670, Leiden 2000, p. 68 (as Govert Flinck)

Collection catalogues

1934, p. 101, no. 931a (as Govert Flinck); 1960, p. 103, no. 930 A 2 (as Govert Flinck); 1976, p. 229, no. A 3133 (as Govert Flinck)

Citation

Jonathan Bikker, 2023, 'circle of Govert Flinck, Mercury, Argus and Io (Metamorphoses I: 677-717), after c. 1659', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8423

(accessed 12 June 2025 10:54:47).