Plate 10: A Lion and a Civet Cat, c.1575/1590s

Not on View

series Title

Vol.II, Animalia Qvadrvpedia et Reptilia (Terra)

Medium

watercolor and gold paint on parchment

Dimensions

page size (approximate): 14.3 x 18.4 cm (5 5/8 x 7 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald

Accession Number

1987.20.6.11

Artists / Makers

Joris Hoefnagel (artist) Flemish, 1542 - 1600

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

upper center in blue(?) ink: Lilia agros, virtusque viros, coelum astra coronatn: ut leo vir fortis, dulce et amare bibit (The lilies adorn the fields, virtue adorns man, the stars adorn the sky. Just like the lion a virtuous man drinks from the sweet and the bitter, trans. Schober 2021, 51, note 56); upper center in pink ink: MORTVA LEONI, ET LEPORES INSVLTA[N]T (Even hares attack a lion when it's dead, Erasmus Adages); lower center: Dic mihi Teucrorum proles, animali muta. / Quis generosa putet, nisi fortia? (Tell me, thou offspring of the Trojans, who thinks dumb animals noble, unless strong? Juvenal); on tablet at left in image in light red ink: VICIT LEO / DE / TRIBV IVDA
Facing page: upper center in (gold?): Venatio leonis Onager in Eremo: / sic Pascua dimitum sunt pauperes.; middle center in black ink: :2: / Est locus et cauda, et villis huic obsitus albis, / Podicis inferiorq[ue] loco, quo parcius alba / Excrementa fluunt redolentia: Cepimus illa / Inter delicias: Hominum dementia tanta est.; lower center in blue ink: Corpora magnanimo, satis est prostrasse LEONI. / Pugna suum finem, cum facet hostis habet.; lower center in red ink: Iratus recole, quod nobilis ira LEONIS, / In sibi prostratos, se negat esse feram.

Provenance

Emperor Rudolf II of Austria?[1]; Secretarius Heinrich Hagen, Vienna, 1611.[2] Count Emanuel Maria Joseph von Arco, Munich, 1751.[3] Graf von Seinsheim, canon of Salzburg and Speyer, 1753. Master stonemason Rüpfel, Munich, c. 1830. Joseph Anton Niggl [1792 - 1842], Markt Tölz. Karl August von Brentano [1817 - 1896], Augsburg. (sale, Rudolph Weigel, 28 October 1861, no. 2220-a-d]; (Frederick Startridge Ellis [active 1860 - 1885], London; formerly identified as F. S. Eliot)[3]; Henry Huth [1815 - 1878], London; by descent to his son, Alfred Henry Huth [1850 - 1910], London; (sale, Sotheby's' London, 12 June 1913, no. 3722); (William Wesley & Son, London); Charles Francis George Richard Schwerdt, Old Alresford House, Hampshire (his sale, Sotheby's' London, 15 July 1946, no. 2216); (The Rosenbach Company, Philadelphia); Lessing J. Rosenwald, Jenkintown; given to Edith Goodkind Rosenwald, Jenkintown; gift to NGA, 1987.

[1] Although Van Mander claims the series was commissioned and purchased by Rudolf, this is impossible as dates scattered throughout volumes pre-date Hoefnagel's' contact with Rudolf. The series does not appear in Rudolf's' inventory, though he is likely to have owned it at one time as many copies from the volumes appear in his natural history collections, now in Vienna (see Bass 2020, 12).

[2] Vignau-Wilberg 2017, 98 without documentation.
[3]Wolfgang Wegner, Kurfurst Carl Theodor von der Pfalz als Kunstsammler, Mannheim, 1960: 13.
[4] Ellis was a book dealer who frequently sold to Huth and wrote the catalogue of Huth's' collection. He started his own business just a year before The Four Elements appeared at Weigel. Ellis is correctly identified by M. Bartels, "Ueber abnorme Behaarung beim Menschen," Zeitschrift fu¨r Ethnologie 11 (1879): 155, note 1.

Associated Names

Rosenwald, Lessing J., Mrs.

Exhibition History

1982: Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire, = 1540 - 1680, The Art Museum, Princeton University, National Gallery of Art, Museum of Art, Carnegie Insitute, Pittsburgh (exh. cat. by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, no. 56.

1982: Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire, 1540 - 1680, The Art Museum, Princeton University, National Gallery of Art, Museum of Art, Carnegie Insitute, Pittsburgh (exh. cat. by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, no. 56.

Bibliography

1984: Hendrix, Lee. Joris Hoefnagel and the Four Elements: a Study in Sixteenth-Century Nature Painting. Ph.D. Hendrix, Lee. Joris Hoefnagel and the Four Elements: a Study in Sixteenth-Century Nature Painting. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1984 (series).dissertation, Princeton University, 1984 (series).

2017: Vignau-Wilberg, Thea. Joris and Jacob Hoefnagel: Art and Science around 1600. Berlin, 2017: no. A6 (for series).

2019: Bass, Marisa Ann. Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt. Princeton, 2019 (for series).

2021: Schober, Sarah-Marie. "Taming the Untamable: Early modern civet cats and the nature-culture dichotomy" Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek vol 71 (Humans and Other Animals, ed. Eric Jorink, Joanna Woodall, and Edward H. Wouk) (2021): 38 - 41 and fig. 5