Lucas Cranach the Elder and Workshop

Hercules at the Court of Omphale

Estimate

700,000 - 900,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from a Connecticut Collection (Lots 315-321)

Lucas Cranach the Elder and Workshop

Kronach 1472 - 1553 Weimar

Hercules at the Court of Omphale

signed with the artist's device of a winged serpent and dated upper left: 1533

inscribed upper left: HERCVLEIS MANIBVS DANT LYDAE PENSA PVELLAE / IMPERIVM DOMINAE FERT DEVS ILLE SVAE / SIC ECIAM ENGENTES ANIMOS INSANA VOLVPTAS / ET DOMITO MOLLIS PECTORE ERANGIT AMOR (The Lydian maidens give work to the hands of Hercules / that God who endures the rule of his mistress [Omphale] / thus does crazed desire capture even his great mind / that is tamed by love’s soft breasts)

oil on panel

panel: 32 ⅜ by 46 ⅝ in.; 82.2 by 118.4 cm

framed: 41 ⅝ by 55 ⅛ in.; 105.7 by 140.0 cm

Lieutenant Colonel Matthäus Pfau von Wintherthur (1820-1877), Schloss Kyburg, Switzerland, by 1865;

Thence by descent within the family;

By whom anonymously sold, London, Christie's, 25 April 2001, lot 30 (as Lucas Cranach the Younger);

With Verner Amell Ltd., London (as Lucas Cranach the Younger);

From whom acquired by the present collector, 2004.

Kyburg, die Stammburg mütterlicher Seite Rudolfs v. Habsburg, Winterthur 1866, p. 34 (as Lucas Cranach the Elder);

G. Baumbach, "'SIC ECIAM INGENTES ANIMOS INSANA VOLVPTAS': Die Herkules-und-Ompahle-Darstellung der Cranach-Werkstatt und ein Gemälde Lucas Cranach d. J. für Kardinal Albrecht von Brandenburg," in Wir wollen der Liebe Raum geben: Konkubinate geistlicher und weltlicher Fürsten um 1500, A. Tacke (ed.), Gottingen 2006, pp. 377, 391-392, reproduced fig. 3 (as Lucas Cranach the Younger);

M. Hofbauer, Corpus Cranach: Lucas Cranach I und Lucas Cranach II, Verzeichnis der Gemälde unter Berücksichtigung von Werkstattumfeld und Epigonen, Heidelberg 2022, p. 247, cat. no. CC-MHM-120-007, reproduced (as Lucas Cranach the Elder and under his Workshop);

K.A.E. Enenkel, Theatre of Sexual Attraction and Psychological Destruction, The Myth of Hercules and Omphale in the Visual Arts, Leiden and Boston 2024, pp. 68-70, reproduced fig. 1B (as Lucas Cranach the Elder);

"Herkules bei Omphale," Cranach Digital Archive, https://lucascranach.org/de/PRIVATE_NONE-P611/ (as Lucas Cranach the Younger and Lucas Cranach the Elder).