Hans Bol

In the family of the present owner since the early 19th century

Small retouched area in sky, top right edge. Otherwise exceptionally good and fresh. Sold in 19th-century decorative gilded frame.
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The subject, taken from the poem Il Pastor Fido, by the 16th-century Italian poet Guarini, is a close variant of the Ovidian story of Cephalus and Procris, but whereas in Ovid's version the tragic heroine is killed by her lover's spear, here she is shot with an arrow.  Bol included the figures of Cephalus and Procris in several works.  The earliest is a drawing of 1567 (formerly Oppenheimer collection, now Royal Library, Brussels).¹  Next in the sequence comes a large, finished, reversed version of the first drawing, dated 1570,² followed by another, much smaller study, dated 1573, in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam.³  The Amsterdam drawing was in turn engraved by an unknown hand for a series of illustrations of the Metamorphoses, after Bol's designs, published in 1575.⁴  

The present gouache, executed nearly a decade later, seems to be the only work in which Bol illustrated the related story of Silvio and Dorinda.  The two tales did however, convey much the same moral message to married couples, warning against mistrust and jealousy.  In both, the heroine, suspicious that her husband, a hunter, is being unfaithful, follows him into the woods and hides.  The hero then mistakes his wife for an animal and accidentally kills her.  

Hans Bol was born in Malines, but moved to Antwerp in 1572, following the capture of his native city by Spanish troops.  Most of his surviving works from his earlier career consist of designs for prints, although he is also known to have produced decorative paintings in tempera on canvas, almost all of which are lost.  The majority of Hans Bol's gouaches, which constitute the pinnacle of his artistic achievements, date from his Antwerp period.  The year after he produced this exceptional example, Bol moved to Amsterdam, where he lived until his death in 1593.

1.  H.G. Franz, 'Hans Bol als Landschaftszeichner,' in Jahrbuch des kunsthistorischen Institutes der Universität Graz, I, 1965, fig. 37 
2.  Sold, London, Sotheby's, 6 July 2005, lot 8 
3.  K.G. Boon, Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries in the Rijksmuseum, 2 vols., The Hague 1978, cat. no. 81, reproduced (the subject identified as Pyramus and Thisbe)
4.  Hollstein's German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts, ca 1400-1700, vol. III, p. 52, no. 172