Abraham Bloemaert

This impressive figure of Fame was designed by the young Bloemaert around 1590, and included in the upper left of his painting The Feast of the Gods (The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis), now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Some four versions are known of Bloemaert's preparatory study for the figure; the prime example was in the Van Regteren Altena collection¹, and others, usually thought to be copies, are in Uffizi and in the De Boer Collection, Amsterdam.² Bloemaert did, however, frequently make multiple versions of his best figure drawings. 

Bloemaert's great debt, in drawings such as this, to the art of Bartholomeus Spranger (1546-1611) is acknowledged not only in the later inscription on the present sheet, but also in an inscription in the artist's own hand that is to be found on the reverse of the Van Regteren Altena drawing. Indeed, this precise figure of Fame, wielding her twin trumpets of renown and disrepute, derives directly from a print of the Feast of the Gods at the Wedding of Cupid and Psyche, engraved in 1587 by Hendrick Goltzius, after a drawing by Spranger now in the Rijksmuseum.³

1. Sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 10 December 2014, lot 114

2. See J.A. Bolten, Abraham Bloemaert. The Drawings, Leiden 2007, cat. 564

3. H. Leeflang, 'Post uit Praag: over een teruggevonden tekening van Bartholomeus Spranger', Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum, p. 118, fig. 5