Lot 112
  • 112

Pieter Jacobsz. Codde

Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • Pieter Jacobsz. Codde
  • The Judgement of Midas in the Contest between Apollo and Pan
  • signed in monogram and dated lower right on the rock: 16[6?]5
  • oil on oak panel

Provenance

With Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell, London; 
With E. Bolton, London (according to a mount at the Witt Library);
Anonymous sale, Paris, Tajan, 25 June 2002, lot 42 (as Jacob Pynas, dated 1604);
With Pieter de Boer, Amsterdam, 2003.

Literature

E.J. Sluijter, De 'heydensche fabulen' in de schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw, Leiden 2000, p. 43, reproduced p. 405, fig. 118.

Catalogue Note

This scene is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses XI: 146–93. The mountain god Tmolus, seated in the centre, judged the musical contest between Apollo and Pan in Apollo's favour but King Midas, at right, proclaimed that Pan should have won. Here, Codde depicts the very moment of Apollo's vengeance, as he looks indignantly towards Midas, whose ears have already turned into those of an ass. Another representation of this subject by Codde is in the Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig.1 The third numeral of the date here appears to read as a '0' but is most likely interpreted as a '6'.

1. Inv. no. 999; see J. Nicolaisen, Niederländische Malerei 1430–1800 im Museum der bildende Künste Leipzig, Leipzig 2012, cat. no. 58, reproduced.