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Home>Collection>Plate 55: A Tawny Owl, an Eagle Owl, and Two other Owls

Inscription

Upper center in red ink: MVLTAE NOCTVAE SVB TEGVLIS LATITANT. (“Many night owls lie hidden under the rooftops.” Gesner, _Historia animalium_ 3:600, 602) (trans. Bass 2019, 198); center right in (gold?): LV.; images of owls in image numbered .1., .2., and .3.; on branch under owl numbered .2. in image, in (gold?): IN NOCTE CO[N]SILIUM (“Counsel in the nighttime.” Erasmus, _Adages_, 2.2.43) (trans. Bass 2019, 199); lower center in black ink: NOCTVA VOLAT. (“The night owl flies.” Erasmus, _Adages_, 1.1.76) (trans. Bass 2019, 198)
Facing page: Upper center in black/blue ink: Noctua ut in tumulis, super utq[ue] cadavera bubo. / Talis apud Sophoclem, nostra puella sedet.(“As the night owl perches on tombs and the eagle owl on corpses, so my girl sits with Sophocles.” Alciato, _Emblemata_, 127 and Gesner, _Historia animalium_ 3:233) (trans. Bass 2019, 198); lower center in black ink: Ignavus bubo, dirum mortalibus omen. (“Eagle owl, a fearful omen to mankind.” Ovid, _Metamorphoses_ 5.551 (trans. Bass 2019, 198)

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.

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).

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