RECORD

Princeton University Art Museum | volume 77–78 | 2017–18

RECORD
Princeton University Art Museum | volume 77–78 | 2017–18
RECORD

Volume 77–78 / 2017–18

The Record of the Princeton University Art Museum is a

peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes research
based on the Museum’s collections.

Project editor: Janet S. Rauscher

Copy edited and proofread by Sharon Herson
and Sarah Noreika
Designed by Susan Marsh
Composed in Quadraat and Whitney by Matt Mayerchak
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ISSN 0032-843 X

COVER: Follower of Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlandish,

ca. 1450–1516), Christ before Pontius Pilate (detail), 1513–?.
Gift of Allan Marquand, Class of 1874 (y711);
BACK COVER: Robert Pruitt (born 1975, Houston, TX;
active New York, NY), Negra Es Bella (detail), 2014.
Museum purchase, gift of the PECO Foundation (2018-112)

This publication was made possible by the

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
 Contents

4 Foreword 85 Saint Jerome in His Cell:

Betsy J. Rosasco Reexamining a Painting Attributed to
the Workshop of Joos van Cleve
7 Bernini and the Figura Serpentinata: Sarah Rapoport
A Drawing Given to the Princeton
University Art Museum by 101 Artful Foam:
Charles Scribner III in Honor of Social Functions and the Making of
Professor Irving Lavin Erotic Art in Lucas Cranach the Elder’s
Irving Lavin Venus and Cupid
52 Aleksander Musiał
15 Bernini’s Cristo Vivo
122 Acquisitions of the Princeton University
101 Charles Scribner III
Art Museum 2017
25 New Discoveries:
Selected Northern Renaissance Paintings 156 Acquisitions of the Princeton University
at the Princeton University Art Museum Art Museum 2018
Maryan W. Ainsworth
190 Notes on the Contributors
37 The Mass of Saint Gregory:
A “Dramatic Close-Up” of a Prolific 191 Photography Credits
Visual Tradition
Erene Rafik Morcos

52 “More ‘Boschian’ than Bosch”:

Christ before Pontius Pilate
Yifu Liu

69 Reconsidering an Early Sixteenth-Century

Lamentation Attributed to the Workshop
of Cornelis Engebrechtsz
J. S. Hermán
100
 Artful Foam: Social Functions and the Making of Erotic Art
in Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Venus and Cupid

Aleksander Musiał

Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Venus and Cupid in classical tradition that can elucidate our under-
the collection of the Princeton University Art standing of its social and aesthetic functions.2
Museum shows a smaller than life-size female Based on the technical examination of the paint-
figure seductively draping a transparent veil ing, an analysis of its possible viewing contexts,
around her otherwise nude body (fig. 1). The and its place in establishing a self-conscious
identification of the woman as Venus, the clas- practice of approaching antiquity as an erotic
sical goddess of love and sexual pleasure, is experience, I argue herein that the Princeton
indicated by the presence of Cupid, her winged Venus not only self-consciously thematizes this
companion, who is tugging at a transparent new erotic genre but also presents an artistic
blindfold and holds in his left hand a bow and rival to physical nature.
two arrows — the weapons, together with the
burning torch lying on the ground, that serve
as his attributes. Further evidence of the wom- The Birth of the Painting
an’s identity includes her flowing golden hair
and nakedness, both of which find parallels With no extant sources about the painting’s ori-
in ancient and modern representations of the gins before its appearance in the collection of the
goddess.1 The use of scumbling in the figure’s architect Johann Peter Weyer (1794–1864) in mid-
opalescent skin gives it a smooth quality that nineteenth-century Cologne, scholarly debate
emphasizes its velvetlike texture. The formal has concentrated on stylistic analysis.3 The
Fig. 1. Lucas Cranach the Elder features of the painting help elicit the viewer’s composition’s black background, the figures’
(German, active Germany/ pleasure, which emulates the sensual enjoyment linear contours, and the masterful rendering of
Saxony, ca. 1472–1553), Venus of physical corporeal beauty. the goddess’s transparent veil are characteristic
and Cupid, ca. 1520. Oil on Although the theme of Venus and Cupid of the work of the German painter, courtier, and
beechwood panel, 101.5 x
might seem somewhat commonplace to a mod- statesman Lucas Cranach the Elder (ca. 1472–
37.5 cm. Princeton University Art
Museum. Museum purchase,
ern viewer, this would not have been the case for 1553), who was active largely in Vienna, Wit-
gift of George L. Craig Jr., the painting’s contemporary audience in early tenberg, and Weimar during the first half of the
Class of 1921, and Mrs. Craig sixteenth-century Germany. An example of the sixteenth century.4 By considering the Princeton
(y1968-111) so-called Northern nude, an erotic genre that example within the artist’s oeuvre, scholars have
became popular in Northern European art in the drawn close stylistic and iconographic parallels
Fig. 2. Lucas Cranach the Elder,
first decades of the sixteenth century, the Prince- to, for example, Cranach’s Venus of about 1518
Venus, ca. 1518. Oil on limewood
panel, 178 x 71 cm. National ton Venus provides valuable insight into our in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa
Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. understanding of this new artistic phenomenon, (fig. 2).5 The Princeton painting has thus been
Purchased 1953 including its highly sophisticated references to interpreted as an example of the “ca. 1518 group”

101
 of female figures, which, as proposed by Max
J. Friedländer and Jakob Rosenberg, preceded
the figures’ gradual standardization into a dis-
tinctively “Cranachian” type between about 1520
and 1525.6 Both paintings, with their highly fin-
ished surfaces, feature the goddess standing in
a slight contrapposto pose and wearing a pearl
headband atop her billowing golden hair and an
analogous jeweled necklace around her neck. In
her right hand, she holds a transparent veil, her
wrist bent in the same graceful gesture. While
the Ottawa painting bears the artist’s winged-
serpent emblem, the authorship of the Princeton
painting is indicated by the Latin inscription that
identifies the artist as “Luca.”
Although Weyer ascribed the Princeton paint-
ing to Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515–1586), a
proposition also suggested by Dieter Koepplin in
1976, technical examination supports the attri-
bution to Lucas the Elder.7 Infrared reflectogra-
phy (IRR) of the panel shows an underdrawing
with a very summary sketch conveyed through
loose and confident strokes, which resembles
the underdrawing of the Elder’s Venus and Cupid
the Honey-Thief of about 1531 in the Galleria Bor-
ghese in Rome, one of the artist’s most monu-
mental and securely attributed paintings of this
type (figs. 3–5).8 Furthermore, an X-radiograph
of the Princeton painting shows changes made
to the goddess’s left hand and reserve areas
around other limbs, indicating slight reworking
of their positions as part of the creative process.
Another distinctive aspect of the Elder’s works
that the Princeton Venus shares is its beechwood
support.9 Although most contemporary North-
ern workshops preferred Baltic oak or limewood
panels, Cranach’s studio often used beechwood
beginning around 1520–22 until about 1535.10
This supports the date of about 1520 that, based
on stylistic analysis, Rosenberg assigned the
Princeton panel in his revised edition of Cran-
ach’s catalogue raisonné, which was followed
by Franz Matsche.11 Such a date would situate
the painting within Cranach’s period of dynamic
stylistic and iconographic developments. This
phase began after 1505, when, at the invitation
of the Saxon elector Frederick III the Wise (1463–
1525), he arrived at the court of Wittenberg, but

102 | Princeton University Art Museum Record | volume 77–78

 painting (see fig. 2) through a complex configura-
tion of attributes that remains singular in Cran-
ach’s extant corpus. In the former, Cupid, tugging
at his transparent blindfold, holds in his left hand
two arrows, one pointed and one blunt (see figs. 1,
13). The tension between the oppositions of sight
and blindness, sharpness and bluntness is further
intensified by the burning torch, often interpreted
as a symbol of burning desire, that ironically lies
discarded at Cupid’s feet.16 Furthermore, although
the facial features of the Princeton Venus depart
from that of the Ottawa example, nor do they
find similarities among the painter’s celebrated
courtly portraits, her distinctively high forehead,
narrow lips, arched eyebrows, and rounded chin
recall those of other female figures by the artist,
including Saint Margaret in the Prague altarpiece
(ca. 1520–22) and Saints Catherine, Margaret, and
Barbara in a painting in the Toledo Museum of Art
Fig. 4. Detail of infrared before 1527–35, when his sons joined his work- in Ohio (ca. 1515–20; fig. 7).17 The latter example
reflectogram assembly of fig. 3 shop, further expanding his enterprise and stan- is particularly telling as it too includes a discarded
showing underdrawing dardization practices.12 burning torch, this time lying near the feet of Saint
Margaret, a virgin martyr who preferred to be tor-
Fig. 5. Detail of infrared
reflectogram assembly of fig. 1 tured with burning logs and die than to be mar-
showing underdrawing A New Genre ried. Such an antithetic juxtaposition — of a pure
Christian martyr and a sensuous pagan goddess
Cranach is celebrated for his sensual depictions known for her sexual license — invites viewers
of the goddess of love that revolutionized North- to explore the provocative self-consciousness of
ern Renaissance painting.13 There are more than Cranach’s newly introduced nude.
seventy representations of Venus associated But why did Cranach create such a visual oxy-
with his workshop, showing her either alone or moron, with a symbol of burning desire lying
accompanied by Cupid.14 Moreover, Cranach’s abandoned near the feet of his eroticized Venus
1509 Venus and Cupid in the State Hermitage and a Cupid who is blindfolded yet able to see?
Museum in Saint Petersburg (fig. 6), a com- Furthermore, why did the artist’s patrons sud-
position that responds to, among others, the denly come to desire images of such nudes in
depictions of Adam and Eve by Albrecht Dürer their homes, and what may have been the socio-
(1471–1528), is widely accepted as the earliest- cultural consequences of this rapid develop-
known life-size painting of the nude goddess ment? In considering these questions, one must
of love in Northern European art.15 Through account for the possible functions and viewing
their parallel poses and compositions, other contexts of this emerging erotic genre, an inves-
contemporary Cranach nudes — including Eve, tigation that in turn will help frame an analysis of
Judith, Lucretia, the huntress Diana, and the the self-referentiality of the Princeton painting,
sleeping nymph — offer compelling points of a less-studied example among Cranach’s early
opposite: comparison and contrast between sex, gender, nudes. This approach will complicate popular
Fig. 3. Lucas Cranach the Elder,
and power filtered through classical and biblical interpretative patterns by focusing on the com-
Venus and Cupid the Honey-Thief,
ca. 1531. Oil and tempera on narratives. plex and sophisticated culture of viewing and
beechwood panel, 169 x 67 cm. The Princeton Venus reinterprets and enriches responding to art that emerged in response to
Galleria Borghese, Rome the composition of the aforementioned Ottawa the introduction of this explicitly erotic genre.18

Musiał | Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Venus and Cupid | 103

 Moralizing Temptresses

It is commonplace in the scholarship to interpret

Cranach’s erotic nudes in terms of an outright
moralizing purpose.19 The Princeton painting,
for example, has been interpreted by Robert A.
Koch as an expression of Neoplatonic ideas in
accordance with Erwin Panofsky’s reading of the
“Blind Love” motif as a metaphor for materially
oriented earthly love, as opposed to the nudity
of celestial Venus, which was seen as emblematic
of divine love.20 The painting’s discarded torch
and Cupid, therefore, were understood as being
in opposition to Venus, whose elongated nude
figure serves as an elevating force in the compo-
sition.21 Little attention has been paid to the fact
that the goddess is not shown in the traditional
Venus Pudica pose, in which she would cover her
womb with an outstretched palm. Instead, the
artful placement of the transparent veil serves
to draw attention to the bodily eroticism of the
Princeton Venus rather than to the spiritual
delights of platonic love.22
Nevertheless, seeing Cranach’s immodest
Venuses in a moralizing mode has been sus-
tained through the notion that their eroticism
serves as figurative bait, urging viewers to fol-
low the paintings’ inscriptions by choosing
chastity and exercising self-discipline, thereby
resisting the seductive charm of the beautiful
temptresses.23 Given their similar iconography
and compositions, the goddess’s depictions
have often been classified with images of Eve,
resulting in an analogous moral evaluation of
the scenes.24 This comparison is particularly
relevant to the Hermitage Venus (see fig. 6),
which was purchased for Catherine the Great in
1769 from Count Heinrich von Brühl’s collection
in Dresden.25 A more detailed consideration of
paradoxes staged through the genre’s eroticism
will help illuminate the dynamics of viewership
within which the Princeton painting was created.
Reading the Hermitage painting as a trial
through temptation might seem to be suggested

Fig. 6. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Venus and Cupid,

1509. Oil on wood, 213 x 102 cm. The State Hermitage
Museum, Saint Petersburg

104 | Princeton University Art Museum Record | volume 77–78

 by its inscription, which calls for the reader to
reject the excess of desire or risk having one’s
heart “possessed” by the blind or blinding Venus:
“Pelle Cupidineos toto conamine luxus / Ne tua
possideat pectora ceca Venus” (Drive away with
all might Cupid’s debauchery / That your breast
be not possessed by blind Venus).26 As the tex-
tual message was given priority over the visual
one, the painting was understood as challenging
the viewer through its disruptive yet ultimately
moralizing content. However, the highly eroti-
cized and sensual depiction of the goddess’s
smooth body and protruding nipples provoked
doubts regarding the possible shortcomings of
such literal readings of the image — and instead
was taken as cue for understanding Cranach’s
nudes as pornographic devices.27 The painting’s
inscription was interpreted as a disclaimer that
legitimizes an otherwise illicit image; however,
a careful analysis of the relationship between the
work’s text and image suggests a more nuanced
relationship between them.
The inscription on the Hermitage Venus
offers a much different message if viewed as
part of the painting’s composition. The use
of the noun luxus — a word that evokes both
material luxury and physical debauchery, as a
Latin cognate of luxuria, the Christian cardinal
vice of lust — can be understood equivocally,
not only as a moralizing sermon but also as a
self-ironic comment on this life-size image by
a court artist, which in itself epitomizes con-
spicuous consumption.28 The ambivalence of
the Hermitage painting’s moral status is inten-
sified by the way in which the distich is visually
interrupted by the goddess’s head. In order to
read the inscription in its entirety, viewers are
paradoxically compelled to look into the eyes of
the woman about whom they are being warned.
The inscription becomes a kind of trap, drawing
viewers toward the supposedly corrupting god-
dess precisely at the moment it advises them to

Fig. 7. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Saints Catherine,

Margaret, and Barbara, ca. 1515–20. Oil on wood panel,
123.2 x 55.8 cm. Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio. Purchased
with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in
memory of her father, Maurice A. Scott (1961.32)

Musiał | Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Venus and Cupid | 105

 beware her danger. As long as the inscription was published by Georg Sabinus (1508–1560), a
is being viewed, its imperative cannot be fol- student of Philip Schwartzerd (1497–1560), his
lowed. The verse’s appeal to the steadfastness future father-in-law, who was both a professor
of the soul, as emphasized by the phrase of toto of Greek at Wittenberg University and the promi-
conamine (with all might), is undercut by the nent Lutheran theologian known as Melanch-
sophisticated auto-irony of the painting’s com- thon, the Atticized equivalent of his surname.31
mand not to be viewed by its own beholders.29 The latter published his own translation of the
The viewers are titillated and subdued into a ancient text in 1528 32 and commented on Cran-
visual entanglement within which, as long as ach himself in his 1531 rhetorical manual. There
the viewing of the image lasts, they are com- he deployed Quintilian’s comparison of Zeuxis
pelled to commit an imaginary transgression and Apelles to extol the “greatness” of Dürer’s
orchestrated by the artist, while simultaneously paintings in comparison to the “gracefulness”
savoring the seductive pleasure of the act. The of Cranach.33 One can therefore observe among
sternness of the inscription’s explicit message leading members of the Wittenberg elite, exem-
is imbued with irony that further intensifies the plified by Melanchthon and Sabinus, an inter-
erotic impact of the image. est in fostering innovation both on religious and
Such a reading may seem to destabilize the artistic grounds that situated the unorthodox
perception of Cranach as a charismatic advocate rethinking of traditional ethical values and the
of the Reformation movement. However, the dynamic development of classical imagery in an
apparent contradiction of producing contempo- intimate proximity.34
rary images of Martin Luther and Venus in close
quarters should not be surprising. When in 1505
Cranach moved to Wittenberg at the invitation Contexts of Viewing
of Frederick the Wise, he arrived at one of the
most dynamic intellectual centers of the German Such a contextualization of Cranach’s artistic
Renaissance. The elector’s intellectual interests, practice might point to a conclusion that his
inspired in part by his stay in Italy during his Venuses were intended as conversation pieces.35
journey to Jerusalem in 1493– 95, were further By comparing the Princeton painting with
manifested through his association with schol- equally alluring works by the painter Hans Bal-
ars at the University of Wittenberg, founded in dung Grien (1484/85–1545) and, especially, the
1502. Their debates became one of the catalysts sculptor Conrat Meit (ca. 1470/85–1550/1; see,
of the Reformation initiated by Luther, the uni- for example, fig. 8), who worked in Wittenberg
versity’s professor of theology and a protégé of from 1508 to 1511 in cooperation with Cranach’s
Frederick the Wise in the 1520s. Simultaneously, workshop, one could argue that this panel could
these same German Neo-Latin humanists played have been made for humanist intellectual circles
an instrumental role in popularizing classical exercising their erudition in a Kunstkammer avant
imagery at the electoral court.30 la lettre (often known as “chambers of curiosi-
Cranach’s interest in ancient mythology ties”).36 Some light can be shed on this question
closely responds to these developments, as and possible topics of related conversations by
exemplified by his iconographic type of Venus considering a contemporary response to Cran-
and Cupid being stung by honeybees. This ach’s mythological paintings that provides pre-
Fig. 8. Conrat Meit (German, theme, commonly interpreted as an allegory for cious insight into the discourse that surrounded
active Germany and the Nether- succumbing to lust as a short pleasure followed these works’ potential for provocation.
lands, ca. 1480–ca. 1550), Judith by pain, is a direct response to the nineteenth In 1514 the German scholar and poet Philipp
with the Head of Holofernes,
Idyll, on Eros Keriokleptes (Honeycomb Stealer), Engelbrecht (ca. 1480–1528) wrote an epithala-
ca. 1525. Polychromed alabaster,
h. 29.5 cm. Bayerisches Nation- attributed to Hellenistic Greek poet Theocritus mium in praise of the wedding of John the Stead-
almuseum, Munich (inv.-Nr. R (see, for example, fig. 3). The explicit poetic fast, brother of Frederick the Wise, and Margaret
204) quatrain accompanying the iconographic type of Anhalt, his second wife, at Torgau castle.37

106 | Princeton University Art Museum Record | volume 77–78

 The poem has been explored predominantly as a
source of factual information on Cranach rather
than as a piece of literature to be taken on its own
terms.38 The word epithalamium in the poem’s
title relates it to the traditional ancient genre
practiced by, among others, Sappho, Theocri-
tus, and Catullus that celebrated the wedding
night and the bride’s loss of virginity.39 Engel-
brecht’s poem, a publicly circulated praise of the
newly wedded couple, reflects the Greek name
of the genre, which translates to “on the bed,”
as it includes an almost two-hundred-line-long
description of the princely couple’s marital bed,
which, according to the text, was decorated by
Cranach. Such an ekphrasis shares a long and
refined classical lineage, reaching to at least the
famous description of the marital bed of Peleus
and Thetis in Catullus’s Carmen 64.40 Given that
there are no extant examples within Cranach’s
oeuvre of several of the scenes that adorned the
bed, such as the rape of Ganymede, it is pos-
sible that the artful assemblage described may
not have existed but rather resulted from the
poet combining impossible images through
the use of rhetorical and common literary tropes
reunited in an artful form. However, a few scenes
described in the text strikingly evoke Cranach’s
known subjects, including the suicide of Lucre-
tia, and Venus and Cupid.
The poem’s reference to Venus and Cupid
occupies a single yet highly dense couplet:
“Instruit ad natum fraudes Ericina procacem /
Armaque contrectat: mollia tela; manu” (The
Lady of Eryx instructs her wanton son on
treacheries and touches his weapons with her
hand: his darts [remain] soft).41 The goddess,
here referred to by a toponymic epithet, Erycina,
instructs her “wanton son” about the “treacher-
ies of love.” The blunt placement of the word
manu (with her hand) at the end of the line reverts
to the Virgilian scene of Venus bringing arms
to her son Aeneas by emphasizing the haptic
quality of the goddess’s handling of Cupid’s soft
darts. The incestuous overtones of the descrip-
tion foreground the ironic paradox of the distich,
whereby the goddess of love is unable to enact
sexual arousal.42 Such an anticlimactic tension
further intensifies the transgressive delights of

Musiał | Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Venus and Cupid | 107

 The emerging erotic genre’s intimate social
environment — the marital bedchamber, for
example — has parallels in the realm of elite
court culture. Consider, for example, the 1529
inventory following the death of Philip of Bur-
gundy (1465–1524), bishop of Utrecht. A former
admiral and Charles V’s ambassador to the pope,
Philip was a generous patron of such prominent
figures as the humanist Erasmus (d. 1536) and
artists Jan Gossart (ca. 1472–1532) and Conrat
Meit, whose summoning directly from Witten-
berg to the Netherlands in 1511 signals a cultural
connection operating between the two courts.43
Among the objects recorded at the bishop’s
Duurstede castle are “a marble statue of Priapus”
in the treasury and, in the bedroom, a tapestry
of a hunting scene showing, as described in the
inventory, “a man who wants to put his drill into
the web of a young woman”; in the bishop’s satel-
lite residence were “two expensive, well-made
paintings of illicit love affairs with a storage box
in which one belongs,” and in its private study
room was “a large painting of a nude woman
with an arrow in the hand called Cupid covered
with a blue and yellow curtain.”44 Manipulations
with contexts of viewing can also be found in the
surviving Venus and Cupid by Gossart (1521; fig. 9),
which has recently been ascribed to Philip’s col-
lection, as the painting’s sophisticated inscrip-
tion emphasizes the torturous and transgressive
potentialities of love, admonishing, “Shameless
son, you who are inclined to torment men and
gods, you do not [even] spare your [own] mother:
cease, lest you be destroyed.”45 The helplessness
Fig. 9. Jan Gossart (Flemish, Cranach’s Hermitage Venus by momentarily of this appeal, also anticipated through sculp-
active the Netherlands, 1470– subverting the normative marital context of the tural reliefs in the painting showing Venus’s
1541), Venus and Cupid, 1521. Oil
scene. Although none of Cranach’s surviving illicit affair with Mars, becomes intensified by its
on oakwood panel, 36 x 32.5 cm.
paintings has been identified as exemplifying placement on a removable element of the frame,
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts
de Belgique, Brussels the “education of Cupid” theme, the possibility thanks to which the tempering voice can be figu-
of recognizing the artist’s Venus and Cupid series ratively silenced at the viewer’s convenience.46
as an example of such instruction, including the The sense of exclusivity of experiencing erotic
honeycomb motif whereby the latter discovers images is intensified by their having been dis-
the painful consequences of an uncontrolled played in secluded spaces and often with barri-
pursuit of bodily desire, offers an alternative to ers that helped contain their provocative content
interpreting the Princeton painting as a scene and shield it from unsolicited beholders. The act
of the winged god’s punishment or rejection. In of viewing, therefore, is turned into a stylized
this sense, blindfolding the “wanton son” can performance predicated on opening a box, draw-
serve as part of his exercise. ing a curtain, or removing a frame, whereby the

108 | Princeton University Art Museum Record | volume 77–78

viewer must visually undress the artwork to fur- The distich compares Venus’s birth from the
ther interact with the represented naked body. sea with her rebirth with wine at the hands of
In this context, Cranach’s nudes should master Lucas. The temporal opposition created
not be reduced to detached intellectual con- by the placement of quondam (once) and nunc
structions in which the eroticism of the scene (now) is balanced by the repetition of spumis,
becomes simply a naughty subtext to a gener- understood as the foams either of the sea or of
ally moralizing or aestheticized reading. While the painter himself. The precise phrasing of this
the Hermitage Venus, for example, presents a elegiac distich, however, has proved a challenge
provocative dramatization of the act of viewing for scholars.47 William Heckscher approached
whereby the beholder is lured into the role of the difficulties in reconstructing the syntax
an intruder or transgressor, Engelbrecht’s poem of the verse, especially regarding the pentam-
enriches possible readings of the Venus images eter’s elided verb, by comparing it with that
by evoking the “education of Cupid” topos. Jux- of another painting of Venus and Cupid from
taposing Cranach’s nudes and the display of Cranach’s circle, now in the Niedersächsisches
Philip of Burgundy’s erotic art — a system that Landesmuseum in Hannover, Germany. The
included curtains, boxes, and perhaps even heavily repainted work, whose status as either
removable frames — demonstrates the erotic a reworked original or a later copy has been
genre’s intimate and self-ironic valences, which debated by scholars, bears two inscriptions,
thematize its transgressive potential. These fea- one in Greek and one in Latin.48 While the for-
tures reflect the genre’s emergence through the mer seems corrupted and its meaning is open
agency of a network of intellectuals who valued to speculation, the latter reads: “Oceani quon-
artistic subversiveness and erudite criticism. The dam spumis Venus orta ferebar / Nunc spumis
boldness and novelty of images of Venus pro- Luca vivo renata tuis” (Once upon a time risen
vided a basis for their popularity in various sizes from the foam of the sea, I, Venus, was wafted
and media, in relation to a strong cultural ten- ashore / Now, oh Lucas, I live reborn thanks
dency to rethink traditional moral, conceptual, to your foam).49 Two changes in wording —
and artistic frameworks through classical and, namely, ferebar (I was carried by, i.e., drifted)
as we will see, ecclesiastical learning. and vivo (I live) — respectively replace the Prince-
ton inscription’s more common lection of the
intransitive ferebat (claimed) and vino (with/from/
Mimetic Seductions through wine).50 This change elides the allusion
to alcoholic intoxication and turns the epigram
Having recognized the limitations of the prevail- into a first-person statement by the goddess her-
ing readings of the Princeton painting in light self, much in line with the rhetorically grounded
of the genre’s contemporary reception and motif of “speaking pictures.” 51
display, one must consider alternative explana- Following the principle of lectio difficilior,52
tions of the work’s paradoxical imagery. Given scholars assumed the Princeton inscription to
the eroticism and transgressiveness of responses be a corrupted version of the Hannover one, an
to the nude observed above, would reducing the assessment that resonates with Dieter Koep-
Princeton painting to a sexual tool in a princely plin’s doubts regarding the former’s attribution
bedchamber be justified? to the Elder Cranach, as he claimed that such a
The painting’s conceptual complexity is mistake had no precedent among the master’s
underscored by the two-line inscription in extant paintings.53 Nevertheless, examples
antique font at the top of the composition: “Oce- of other repainted or misspelled inscriptions
ani quondam spumis Venus orta ferebat / Nunc can be found in Cranach’s oeuvre, including in
spumis Luca vino renata tuis” (Once from sea the Sleeping Nymph of about 1537 in the Musée
foams Venus said to be born; now with wine, des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie in Besançon,
Lucas, [is] she reborn thanks to your foams). France; the Honeybee Venus from after 1537 in

Musiał | Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Venus and Cupid | 109

Fig. 10. Detail of fig. 1 Examining the text’s insertion into the Princeton
Venus will help elucidate iconography and the
self-referential potency of pictorial eroticism.
One of the most conspicuous features of the
inscription is the repeated mention of spumae
(foams). Such a term is unsurprising in the
context of the birth of Venus/Aphrodite from
sea-foam that, according to Hesiod, was insemi-
nated by sperm from the castrated genitals of
Ouranos, which Chronos, his son and mutila-
tor, had thrown into the ocean.57 However, an
emphasis on seeing the rebirth of the goddess
as a result of Cranach’s (pro) creative act is tell-
ing.58 The spermatological connotations of
praising artistic prowess simultaneously reso-
nate with descriptions of the famous lost paint-
ing of Venus Rising from the Sea by the renowned
fourth-century-B.c. Greek painter Apelles of
Kos. The painting showed the nude goddess
the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin; and the Honybee with flowing unbound hair in an image type
Venus of about 1530 formerly in the Branicki col- known as the “Anadyomene” (fig. 10).59 This
lection in Warsaw.54 Such variations could have celebrated ancient painting was widely emu-
been caused by later restorations or sporadic lated and described by, among others, Ovid as
disconnectedness within the practice of the showing the goddess “wringing her damp hair
artist’s workshop.55 The Princeton painting’s with her hands and seeming barely covered by
X-radiograph does not indicate any signs of her maternal waves.” 60 With the body of Venus
repainting surrounding the inscription; without covered by a transparent veil, it is not simply the
further microscopic examination, the cause of goddess’s figurative rebirth that is at stake but
the variation in its inscription remains open to also the very possibility of issuing a masterpiece
interpretation. in the postclassical era.
Fixating on grammatical correctness, how- Heckscher, however, argued that the Prince-
ever, may detract from the messages the Prince- ton painting lacked sufficient visual references
ton inscription conveys. It is worth noting that to the Anadyomene model—such as the land-
the 1852 inventory of Johann Peter Weyer’s col- scape, aside from the stony, beach-like ground
lection provides its own free interpretation of and the indication of wind in the rendering of
the text: “Einst aus Meeres Schaum, sagt man the goddess’s hair. He instead considered the
sei Venus entstanden / Nun aus schäumendem picture a refined allusion to an anecdote about
Wein, gebiert dich Lucas aufs neue” (Once Venus the ancient Greek painter Protogenes of Kaunos,
rose from sea foam, so one holds / now Lucas another narrative in which foam plays a promi-
bears you anew from sparkling wine).56 This nent role.61 Protogenes, frustrated by his inabil-
reading, jovially emphasizing the role of wine ity to convincingly render foam flowing from the
in the artist’s creative process, shows that the mouth of a running dog, threw a sponge soaked
text need not be interpreted through the lens of a in paint at the picture, the result of which, by
right-or-wrong binary but rather can be seen as a accident, created the desired effect.62 A compar-
playful variation on a mythological theme. Both ison between the ancient painter, who achieved
versions of the inscription thematize, in either a his objective by chance, and Cranach, whose
more decorous or provocative way, central theo- conscious fashioning of Venus is not a coinci-
retical issues of the painting’s erotic potential. dence but a product of his technical mastery,

110 | Princeton University Art Museum Record | volume 77–78

suggests the superiority of the modern artist.63 were being pronounced by the goddess herself,
Lending support to Heckscher’s proposition is invites a more literal reading of the text. Treating
Engelbrecht’s praise of Cranach for the decora- Cranach’s image as an artificial epiphany would
tion of the marital bed that explicitly refers to correspond to the eulogistic trope, popularized
Protogenes, suggesting the ancient artist’s story by Pliny and others, of celebrating artistic mas-
was known to Wittenberg’s intellectual circles: tery by expressing amazement at the lifelikeness
“non Parrhasius pinxit: non Cous Apelles sed of the figures he has depicted through mimetic
nec Aristides: Protogenesque celer. Omnibus illusion.68 Although such praise does not need
his maior Lucas: quem francia caelo Subdita to refer to the actual illusionistic impact of the
Phosphoreo Cranachiumque tulit” (It was not painting, it would make way for displays of erudi-
painted by Parrhasius, nor Apelles of Cos; yet tion and intellectual exchange in the discourse
neither by Aristides nor rapid Protogenes. Lucas of so-called learned credulity.69 Engelbrecht’s
excels them all, known in France set under bright poem recalls this trope in its description of the
sky as Cranach).64 figures in Cranach’s decoration as appearing
This does not support, however, Heckscher’s to breathe, while Cranach’s inscription on his
assumption that one allusion excludes another 1509 portrait of Christoph Scheurl (1481–1542),
in the rich cultural amalgam embodied by Cra- professor of law at Wittenberg University and
nach’s Venuses. For example, a poem by Johann former pupil of the German “poetry prince”
Stigel (1515–1562), Melanchthon’s pupil and later Konrad Celtis (1459–1508), asks the viewer to
professor of philosophy and Latin at Wittenberg decide whether the painting or the living figure
University, praises one of Cranach’s Venuses by shows better the poet himself.70 By suspend-
explicitly presenting the modern painter as fin- ing the distinction between the goddess’s con-
ishing Apelles’s incomplete Anadyomene: “Pec- ception and her representation on the picture
tus ad usque meum me quondam pinxit Apelles / plane, between the epiphany and the image, the
Me Lucas teneros pinxit ad usque pedes” (Once Princeton painting conceptualizes antiquity’s
Apelles painted me up to my breast / Lucas rebirth through art by inscribing itself in the
painted me up to my delicate feet).65 Further- self-referential discourse preoccupied with the
more, in a wordplay resonating with the Prince- dynamics of mimetic illusion.71 It underscores
ton inscription, Melanchthon himself evoked the the painter’s artful simulating skill as a creative
generative power of the salis spuma (sea-foam) of power and invites its beholders to explore the
the birth of Venus as a figurative source of artis- pleasures and discontents of this phenomenon.
tic invention and elegant wit (lepidos sales) by Such an exploration of mimesis and mecha-
deploying the different meanings of the Latin nisms of viewing is reflected in the depiction of
term sal.66 The figure of the goddess, therefore, the attributes in the Princeton painting. Elke
becomes a foaming mélange of artistic anecdotes Anna Werner has called attention to the trans-
and memories that were cornerstones for artistic parent veils held by Cranach’s nudes, cloths
self-fashioning, predicated on a dialectic rivalry whose white sinuous folds delicately wander
between the ancient quondam and modern nunc.67 over the bodies, articulating and exposing
The rhetoric of emulation was not limited rather than covering.72 Werner has interpreted
to declarations of equality or superiority to a the role of these fabrics in guiding the viewer’s
particular ancient artist; another crucial term eye as a metaphor for seeing, as stimulated by
in the Princeton painting’s inscription is renata the erotic content of the nude genre. The tra-
(reborn), which signifies the goddess’s rebirth at jectories of viewing Cranach’s nudes are thus
the hands of the artist. This word may be under- preconditioned and mirrored by the paintings
stood metaphorically, as the bringing “back to themselves, which provoke beholders to explore
life” of a theme largely obliterated under Chris- the act of seeing themselves seeing the nudes.
tianity. In the Hannover inscription, however, Yet there is a further twist in this self-
the use of the first-person singular, as if the verse conscious vivisection of the erotic eye. What

Musiał | Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Venus and Cupid | 111

Fig. 11. Detail of fig. 1

Fig. 12. Detail of fig. 6

Werner did not fully appreciate in her analysis of viewer’s emotional response.75 The possession
the Princeton painting is the fact that the same of one’s heart through an act of blinding can be
metaphorical “fabric of seeing” is used not only interpreted as a meta-poetic experience, whose
to map the goddess’s body but also to blindfold eroticism is achieved through the artful impact
Cupid (fig. 11). The transparent fabric in the of mimesis on dazzled or desiring-to-be-dazzled
painting does not simply guide the act of seeing beholders, who simultaneously are able to “open
but also suppresses and dominates perception, their eyes” in exploring their very state of visual
as if its flowing wavelike folds were referencing ensnarement.
the illusion of artful foam engendering the body Understanding mimesis as a seductive cou-
of the goddess of love herself.73 Here, the act of pling of seeing and blindness that is imposed
viewing may equally be the act of blinding one- upon the viewer also informs our interpretation
self, especially as the viewer is confronted with of Cupid’s attributes in the Princeton painting.
the slippery realm of mimetic simulation. The sharp and blunt arrows (fig. 13) and the dis-
This paradox of becoming blind while view- carded torch may allude to Ovid’s Metamorpho-
ing a painting, especially of an erotic nude, reso- ses.76 In a rhetorical agon between Apollo and
nates with the Hermitage Venus. Its inscription, Cupid over their archery skills, the former mocks
as discussed above, warns the viewer to reject an the god of desire, urging him to abandon his
excess of desire or risk having their heart “pos- bow, which he considers too manly a weapon for
sessed” by the blind or blinding Venus (“ne tua a child, and instead to use a torch to incite love:
possideat pectora ceca Venus”), yet it does not “tu face nescio quos esto contentus amores /
specify whether “Venus” should be understood inritare tua, nec laudes adsere nostras!” (Be glad
as a metonymy for physical erotic pleasure or your torch can spark a bit of love: don’t try to vie
as a particular painted image that can mislead with me for praise and wreaths!).77 To punish
or blind the beholder. This illusory quality is his boastful opponent, Cupid shoots two arrows,
succinctly manifested by the folded piece of which results in Apollo’s failed attempt to rape
paper near the panel’s left edge (fig. 12).74 The Daphne: “prompsit duo tela pharetra / diverso-
paper denounces the flatness of the painting’s rum operum: fugat hoc, facit illud amorem; /
surface (while being an illusion in itself ), and quod facit, auratum est et cuspide fulget acuta,
simultaneously draws attention to the date and / quod fugat, obtusum est et habet sub harundine
signature inscribed on it, so emphasizing the plumbum” (There, from his quiver, Cupid drew
artist’s agency in both contriving and denounc- two shafts of opposite effect: the first rejects,
ing the interpretative impasse. An erotic artwork the second kindles love. The last is golden, its
elevates the illusionistic power of mimesis to tip is sharp and glittering; the first is blunt, its
another conceptual level, as the work not only tip is leaden).78 Although the Princeton painting
mimics its subject but also anticipates the does not follow the differentiation of materials

112 | Princeton University Art Museum Record | volume 77–78

Fig. 13. Detail of fig. 1 metaphysical realm of abstract ideas. Instead, it
unveils its own illusionistic charisma as a sur-
rogate and full-fledged rival to love in gratifying
pleasure.
Viewers of the Princeton Venus are invited to
be allured by its vividly erotic phantom despite
the indifference of the material. Yet Cranach’s
mimetic power provokes a further step in explor-
ing the erotic potentialities of the new genre: he
transforms an act of seeing into a form of con-
ceptual bondage; an erotic fantasy set against
an isolating dark background can compete with
the realm outside the picture’s plane.81 As in the
described in Ovid, the inclusion of both a pointed Catholic context in which the aforementioned
arrow that generates love and a blunt one causing Saint Margaret rejected earthly desires, visual-
aversion is significant. Together with the burn- ized as a discarded torch, in favor of a transcen-
ing torch, the arrows demonstrate the powerful dent vision of the divine, Cranach’s envisioned
arsenal of the god of desire. nudes may go as far as to supplant their corpo-
Yet, the painting has turned the tables, as real rivals, thus revealing an artful epiphany acti-
there it is Cupid who is dominated, his torch vated by their creator.82 Paradoxically, it is the act
lying discarded on the ground. Relegated to the of savoring the lustful dimension of erotic nudes
realm of the arts, Apollo’s domain, the power that can purify the sexual praxis of the mesmer-
of desire is redirected, as the idealization of the ized viewer.83 The painter’s suggestive mastery
nudes both incites through eroticized mimesis is emphasized by the power of his art to rival the
and teases desire toward an ultimately unreach- realm of actuality by luring and binding human
able object of representation. Sabinus’s quatrain desire into an immersive eroticized fantasy.
on the Borghese Venus reflects this tension: This line of thought does not depart as far
“Dum puer alveolo furatur mella Cu[pido] / from notions of piety in the 1520s as it might
furanti digitum cuspide fixit apis / sic etiam nobis appear.84 Cranach’s close connection with Mel-
brevis et peritura volupta[s] / quam petius tristi anchthon and Luther can further inform this
mixta dolore noc[et]” (As infant Cupid steals development, given Melanchthon’s aforemen-
honey from the hive, a bee stung the thief ’s fin- tioned fascination with Theocritean imagery and
ger. Such is the short and transient pleasure we Luther’s determination to position the question
strive for: harmful and mixed with sad sorrow).79 of sexuality at the center of his reform of the
The moralizing comparison between the pain church. Furthermore, the connections between
of being stung by a bee after the brief pleasure the artist and the theologian extended to their
of eating honey and the sorrows of love leads personal lives. Luther was godfather to Cranach’s
to the dismissal of erotic pleasure as “brevis et daughter Anna; in turn, Lucas and Barbara Cran-
peritura voluptas” (short and transient plea- ach witnessed Martin Luther and Katharina von
sure). This emphasizes the contrast between Bora’s wedding, and the artist was godfather to
the risk of brevity of an actual erotic experience their first son, Johannes. As demonstrated by
and the permanence of an artwork itself, con- Lyndal Roper and Heiko Oberman, in the 1520s
ventionally praised as ars longa, vita brevis.80 Longa Luther’s vehement criticism of celibacy was
voluptas (long pleasure) derived from viewing an predicated on embracing sexual needs as a con-
erotic painting evades the temporal limitations stitutive part of human nature, a line of thought
of physical experience. By dismissing the sor- also shared by Philip of Burgundy, whereby the
rows of earthly affections, the image does not actual perversion of human nature is enacted by
automatically lead to asexualized morality or the the introduction of the imperative of chastity by

Musiał | Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Venus and Cupid | 113

 the Catholic Church.85 This point is exemplified Conclusion
by a rare passage reporting Luther’s commen-
tary on a secular painting, as opposed to sacred Examining Cranach’s Princeton Venus in rela-
images and their status as adiafora (indifferent).86 tion to contemporary discourses and contexts
An episode recorded in Table Talk, a collection of viewing demonstrates the importance of the
of Luther’s sayings reported by his students and erotic effects of the nude genre that prolifer-
first published in 1566, refers to a portrait of ated in sixteenth-century Northern Europe. The
Katharina von Bora, the former nun who became painting’s functions and power can be under-
Luther’s wife, which was probably made by Cra- stood not necessarily as a moralizing warning or
nach himself: “I want to have a man painted in Neoplatonic parable, but rather as a means for
addition to that and the two images sent to the the more dynamic and ambiguous exploration of
council in Mantua and ask the holy fathers who the potentialities of the pleasures the work pro-
are gathered there if they would prefer marriage vokes. Both following Engelbrecht’s suggestion
or celibacy, the unmarried life of the clergy.” 87 to consider Venus and Cupid as participants in
The visual impact of Katharina’s portrait is here the “education of Love” theme and recognizing
deployed by Luther to challenge one of the fun- the painting’s rich network of classical allusions
damental premises of the Catholic Church. The and references serve to illuminate the work’s
image is meant to trigger desire in its male target highly refined and paradoxical intellectual
audience — and in doing so to prompt them to teasing of beholders, who are invited to enjoy
confront and explore their own repressed sexual- the picture and to see themselves seeing it. The
ity. Thus, even a much-less sexualized represen- “education of Love” also extends to the paint-
tation of a former nun kindles the potential for ing’s onlookers. In such an immersive experi-
initiating the “education of Love” that Cranach’s ence, the transparent blindfold, the discarded
Venuses fully activate. While sexual activities as burning torch, and the pointed and blunt arrows
recommended by Luther were restricted to mari- can be conceptualized as indices of the tantaliz-
tal unions, Cranach’s visual exploration of erotic ing pleasures of erotic experience as mediated
pleasure turns out to be less laden with stigma though artistic representation. This emphasis
than some more conventional interpretations on surrogate stimuli invites viewers to exam-
tend to assume.88 The rise of the erotic genre in ine and explore their own erotic experiences by
the first quarter of sixteenth-century Germany savoring an idealized imaginary fantasy. Para-
need not be understood within the “zwischen doxically, in its elusive state of the “artful foam”
Venus und Luther” model suggested by the praised by the inscription, the painting’s plea-
2015–16 exhibition in Nuremberg.89 Rather, in sure without end does not require physical activ-
enacting dialectics of arousing the erotic side of ity. By emulating the seductive effect of Pliny’s
human nature while remaining virtually inacces- lost masterpieces, Cranach valorizes the status
sible, reborn Venus could serve as a midwife of of his artwork as rival to reality thanks to the
newly reformed piety. intoxicating power of mimesis.

114 | Princeton University Art Museum Record | volume 77–78

 Edgar Bierende, Lucas Cranach d. Ä. und der State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg;
Notes deutsche Humanismus: Tafelmalerei im Kontext von the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; the Ger-
Rhetorik, Chroniken und Fürstenspiegeln (Munich: manisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg;
Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2002). and the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen,
I would like to thank Maryan Ainsworth, 5. See, for example, Weyer, Beschreibung, 17–18; Berlin. In addition to the Borghese example,
Anthony Grafton, Bart Devolder, Peter Klein, and Dieter Koepplin and Tilman Falk, Lukas large-scale versions of the honeybee theme
and Gunnar Heydenreich for their generous Cranach, vol. 2, Gemälde, Zeichnungen und Druck- are in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin; the Kröller-
guidance and expertise. I am also grateful to graphik (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1976), 655. Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands; and the
Suzie Hermán, Wojciech Kordyzon, Erene 6. Max J. Friedländer and Jakob Rosenberg, Die Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique,
Rafik Morcos, and my students at Collegium Gemälde von Lucas Cranach (Berlin: Deutscher Brussels. The popularity of the Venus and
Invisibile for their inspiring insights that made Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1932), 48–49; Cupid theme is further indicated by Cranach’s
this project truly rewarding. see also Jakob Rosenberg, “Introduction,” in 1509 woodcut and at least sixteen other paint-
Friedländer and Rosenberg, Paintings of Lucas ings of the subject that are either of contested
1. See, for example, Aby Warburg, “Sandro Bot- Cranach, 23. authorship or considered to be copies. For
ticelli’s Birth of Venus and Spring” (1893), in The 7. Koepplin and Falk, Lukas Cranach, 2:655. For the sake of brevity, I have excluded images of
Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the another example of Cranach’s hidden signa- Venus in Cranach’s paintings of the Judgement
Cultural History of the European Renaissance, trans. ture, see a signet inscribed with his monogram of Paris, another rich subcategory of the art-
David Britt (Los Angeles: Getty Research Insti- shown in the foreground of Virgin under the Fir ist’s oeuvre. These numbers are according to
tute for the History of Art and the Humanities, Tree (1510), reproduced in Aleksandra Szewc- information provided in the Cranach Digital
1999), 89–156; and Berthold Hinz, “Venus im zyk, “Madonna pod Jodłami,” in Moda na Cra- Archive, accessed January 13, 2018, http://
Norden,” in Venus, Bilder einer Göttin, ed. Claudia nacha, ed. Ewa Houszka and Marek Pierzchała, lucascranach.org.
Denk, Evelina Paul, and Konrad Renger, exh. exh. cat. (Wrocław: Muzeum Narodowe we 14. Kren, Burke, and Campbell, Renaissance Nude,
cat. (Munich: Alte Pinakothek, 2001), 32–49. Wrocławiu, 2017), 86–88. 139.
2. Thomas Kren, Jill Burke, and Stephen J. Camp- 8. See Eddy de Jongh, “Amor als honingdief,” 15. Gunnar Heydenreich, Daniel Görres, and
bell, eds., The Renaissance Nude, exh. cat. (Los Kunstschrift 2 (1998): 22. IRR of the Princeton Beat Wismer, eds., Lucas Cranach der Ältere:
Angeles: Getty Institute, 2019), 34–36. painting was carried out by Shawn Digney- Meister, Marke, Moderne, exh. cat. (Düsseldorf:
3. Johann Peter Weyer, Beschreibung des Inhaltes der Peer, conservator at the Metropolitan Museum Museum Kunstpalast, 2017), 148: “Erste leb-
Sammlung von Gemälden älterer Meister des Herrn of Art in New York, on November 13, 2017. ensgroße Aktdarstellung einer antiken Göttin
Johann Peter Weyer in Coeln (Cologne, 1852), 9. Technical analysis by Peter Klein identified the nördlich der Alpen” (First life-size depiction
no. 44. Existing scholarship has suggested support of the Princeton painting as beech- of a nude ancient goddess north of the Alps).
that the earliest record of the Princeton paint- wood. Klein, “Report on the Dendrochrono- Except as cited, translations are my own. See
ing is the 1877 sale of the Émile Isambert col- logical Analysis of the Panel Venus and Amor,” also Elke Anna Werner, “Künstlerische Trans-
lection in Paris. However, the iconography, April 13, 1993, curatorial files, Princeton Uni- ferprozesse und mediale Strategien kulturel-
size, and inscription as published in the Weyer versity Art Museum. ler Aneignung: Cranach und Italien,” and
catalogue match those of the Princeton paint- 10. Gunnar Heydenreich, Lucas Cranach, the Elder: Berthold Hinz, “Aktmalerei bei Cranach: Ein
ing, thus shedding further light on the work’s Painting Materials, Techniques and Workshop Prac- neuer Geschäftszweig,” in Die Welt des Lucas Cra-
nineteenth-century circulation in Europe. tice (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, nach: Ein Künstler im Zeitalter von Dürer, Tizian und
On the Weyer collection, see Jan Białostocki, 2007), 48–49; Gunnar Heydenreich, “‘ . . . That Metsys, ed. Guido Messling, exh. cat. (Leipzig:
“The Weyer Collection,” Bulletin du Musée You Paint with Wonderful Speed’: Virtuosity Seemann, 2010), 35 and 42–53, respectively;
national de Varsovie 3, no. 2 (1962): 39–62; and and Efficiency in the Artistic Practice of Lucas and Anne-Marie Bonnet, “Lucas Cranach
Horst Vey and Karl Josef Bollenbeck, “Johann Cranach the Elder,” in Cranach, ed. Bodo Brink- der Ältere als Primus inter Pares: Competitio
Peter Weyer: Seine Gemäldesammlung und mann, exh. cat. (London: Royal Academy of et aemulatio in der deutschen Aktmalerei,” in
seine Kunstliebe,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 28 Arts, 2007), 30–32. Heydenreich, Görres, and Wismer, Lucas Cra-
(1966): 159–254. For stylistic analysis of the 11. Friedländer and Rosenberg, Paintings of Lucas nach, 40–43.
Princeton painting, see Max J. Friedländer Cranach, 93, no. 116; Franz Matsche, “Human- 16. Koch, “Venus and Amor,” 54.
and Jakob Rosenberg, The Paintings of Lucas Cra- istische Ethik am Beispiel der Mythologischen 17. See Dieter Koepplin to Jakob Rosenberg,
nach, trans. Heinz Norden and Ronald Taylor, Darstellungen von Lucas Cranach,” in Human- n.d., curatorial files, Princeton University Art
rev. ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, ismus und Renaissance in Ostmitteleuropa vor der Museum. For an illustration of Saint Margaret
1978), 93; and Robert A. Koch, “Venus and Amor Reformation, ed. Winfried Eberhard and Alfred in the Prague altarpiece, see its entry in the
by Lucas Cranach the Elder,” in “Erwin Panof- A. Strnad (Cologne: Böhlau, 1996), 54. Cranach Digital Archive, http://lucascranach
sky: In Memoriam,” special issue, Record of the 12. Werner Schade, Die Meisterfamilie Cranach .org/DE_BStGS_1428.
Art Museum, Princeton University 28, no. 1 (1969): (Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1974), 50, 77–79. 18. For examples of popular discussions of the
54–57. Cranach continued to work in Wittenberg erotic genre in Cranach’s oeuvre, see Kenneth
4. For recent scholarship on Cranach’s socio- until the city’s capitulation to Holy Roman Clark, The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art (London:
intellectual context, see Steven E. Ozment, emperor Charles V (1500–1558) in 1547. John Murray, 1960), 319–21; Pierre Descargues,
The Serpent and the Lamb: How Lucas Cranach 13. In addition to the example in Ottawa (see Lucas Cranach the Elder, trans. Helen Ramsbo-
and Martin Luther Changed Their World and Ours fig. 2), paintings showing Venus alone are tham (London: Oldbourne, 1960), 53; Eber-
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012); in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt; Herzog hard Ruhmer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, trans.
Andreas Tacke, ed., Lucas Cranach, 1553/2003: Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig; and Joan Spencer (London: Phaidon, 1963), 19–20;
Wittenberger Tagungsbeiträge anlässlich des 450. the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Large-scale paint- Dieter Koepplin and Tilman Falk, “Akte: Venus
Todesjahres Lucas Cranachs des Älteren (Leipzig: ings of the theme of Venus with Cupid shown oder Adam und Eva,” in Koepplin and Falk,
Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2007); and alone against a dark background are in the Lukas Cranach, 2:641–59; and Joseph L. Koerner,

Musiał | Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Venus and Cupid | 115

 The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renais- substantive, it seems likely that caeca modifies die Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirche Schlesiens 8
sance Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Venus rather than pectora (breast or heart) as (1902): 169–70; Aleksandra Szewczyk, Mecenat
1993), 385–87. the latter is already qualified by tua (your). artystyczny biskupa wrocławskiego Jana V Thurzona
19. See Mark Evans, “‘The Italians, Who Usually 27. Michael Carter, “Cranach’s Women: A Specu- (1506–1520) (Wrocław: ATUT, 2009), 40–41,
Pursue Fame, Proffer Their Hand to You’: lative Essay,” Australian Journal of Art 8 (1989– 63–64. While Bath and Pérez d’Ors convinc-
Lucas Cranach and the Art of Humanism,” 90): 48–77. ingly argue for Sabinus as the author of the
in Brinkmann, Cranach, 57; Pablo Pérez d’Ors, 28. The connection between the imagery of Venus inscription in Cranach’s paintings, I agree with
“A Lutheran Idyll: Lucas Cranach the Elder’s and the dangers of sin has been suggested in Leeman that its first two verses depend heav-
‘Cupid Complaining to Venus,’” Renaissance Joseph Koerner’s reading of the Cranach work- ily on Ercole Strozzi’s epigram “In Amorem
Studies 27, no. 1 (February 2007): 85– 98; and shop painting Hercules at the Crossroads (ca. 1537; Furem,” in Strozzi Poetae Pater et Filius ([Venice:
Werner, “Künstlerische Transferprozesse.” private collection), which constitutes a con- Aldus Manutius, 1513], 90–91): “Dum Veneris
20. Koch, “Venus and Amor,” 54; Erwin Panofsky, ceptual reversal of the Judgement of Paris Puer alveolos furatur Hymetii / Furanti digi-
“Blind Cupid,” in Studies in Iconology: Humanistic scene, with the personification of Vice inter- tum cuspide fixit apis” (As the son of Venus
Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (1939; New preted as following the iconographical type steals Hymettian honey from the hive, a bee
York: Icon Editions, 1972), 95–128. of the goddess of love. See Koerner, Moment stung the thief ’s finger). As demonstrated by
21. William S. Heckscher, “Petites perceptions: An of Self-Portraiture, 385–87. While Vice certainly Leeman, this text was available to Wittenberg
Account of sortes Warburgianae,” Journal of Medi- resembles Cranach’s depictions of Eve, par- readers thanks to the Wittenberg University’s
eval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1974): 116; Anna ticularly due to the inclusion of a fig leaf, a firm ongoing connection with the Aldine Press.
Coliva and Bernard Aikema, eds., Cranach: connection with the Venus imagery is desta- 32. Epigrammata Graeca veterum elegantissima
L’altro Rinascimento (Milan: 24 ORE Cultura, bilized by the similarity of the naked body of (Cologne: Joannes Soter, 1528), 59.
2010), 204–6. Virtue covered only with a transparent veil. For 33. Philip Melanchthon, Elementorum Rhetorices
22. A 1912 gallery catalogue entry on the Princeton an illustration of the painting, see the related Libri Duo (Wittenberg, 1531), n.p. [235]: “Lucae
painting seems to imply this point by saying entry in the Cranach Digital Archive, http:// picturae graciles sunt, quae etsi blandae sunt,
that the veil of Venus “donne satisfaction à la lucascranach.org/PRIVATE_NONE-P092. tamen quantum distent a Dureri operibus,
pudeur” (provides satisfaction to modesty). 29. For additional examples of beholders being collatio ostendit” (The paintings of Lucas are
Galerie Georges Petit, Catalogue des tableaux situated in the role of transgressors in Cra- graceful, which, agreeable as they are, a com-
anciens des écoles primitives et de la Renaissance . . . nach’s oeuvre, see his images of sleeping parison shows how much they differ from the
dependant des collections de M. Jean Dollfus . . . nymphs discussed in Bierende, Lucas Cranach, works of Dürer). This contrast self-consciously
(Paris: Galerie Georges Petit, 1912), 23. On 204–12; and Franz Matsche, “Nympha super revisits Quintilian’s comparison between the
the Venus Pudica pose, see Nanette Salomon, ripam Danubii: Cranachs Quellnymphen und “greatness” of heroic figures by Zeuxis and the
“The Venus Pudica: Uncovering Art History’s ihr Vorbild,” in Tacke, Lucas Cranach, 159–204. “gracefulness” of Apelles, deployed to explain
‘Hidden Agendas’ and Pernicious Pedigrees,” The inscription shared by most paintings of the so-called genera orationis (IO 12.10.5– 6):
in Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts: this type orders beholders not to disturb the “Nam Zeuxis plus membris corporis dedit, id
Feminist Readings, ed. Griselda Pollack (London: sleeping beauty, yet one can see that she is amplius atque augustius ratus . . . ingenio et
Routledge, 1996), 69–87. On the interpreta- already beginning to open her eyes, apparently gratia, quam in se ipse maxime iactat, Apelles
tion of the veil, see Elke Anna Werner, “The in reaction to the stranger’s presence. est praestantissimus.” (For Zeuxis emphasised
Veil of Venus: A Metaphor of Seeing in Lucas 30. Bierende, Lucas Cranach, 201–3. the limbs of the human body, thinking thereby
Cranach the Elder,” in Brinkmann, Cranach, 31. G. Bauch, “Zur Cranachforschung 5: der to add dignity and grandeur . . . Apelles [was
99–109. Honiglieb,” Repositorium für Kunstwissenschaft 17 renowned] for genius and grace, in the latter
23. Matsche, “Humanistische Ethik,” 54–71; Pérez (1894): 434–35; John Hutton, “Cupid and the of which qualities he took especial pride).
d’Ors, “Lutheran Idyll,” 94; Werner, “Veil of Bees,” Publications of the Modern Languages Asso- See The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian with an
Venus,” 35; Bonnet, “Lucas Cranach,” 42. ciation of America 56 (1941): 1040–42; F. W. G. English Translation, trans. Harold Edgeworth
For the classical “choice of Hercules” theme Leeman, “A Textual Source for Cranach’s Butler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
this interpretative pattern follows, see note Venus with Cupid the Honey-Thief,” Burlington Press; London: William Heinemann, 1922),
28 below. Magazine 126 (May 1984): 274– 75; M. Bath, 4:450–53.
24. Hinz, “Aktmalerei bei Cranach”; Bonnet, “Honey and Gall or Cupid and the Bees: A 34. For examples of direct cooperation between
“Lucas Cranach.” Case of Iconographic Slippage,” in Andrea Cranach and Wittenberg scholars in the
25. Johann Gottlieb Georgi, Описание российско- Alciato and the Emblem Tradition: Essays in Honor realm of woodcut printing, see Maria Gross-
императорского столичного города Санкт- of Virginia Woods Callahan, ed. P. M. Daly (New mann, “Wittenberg Printing, Early Sixteenth
Петербурга (Opisanie rossiĭsko-imperatorskogo York: AMS Press, 1989), 66– 67; Pérez d’Ors, Century,” Sixteenth-Century Essays and Studies 1
stolichnogo goroda Sankt-Peterburga) (Saint Peters- “Lutheran Idyll,” 87–88. One should note that (1970): 62–67; and Harry Vredeveld, “‘Lend a
burg, 1794), 481. Bath (p. 69), followed by Pérez d’Ors (p. 87), Voice’: The Humanistic Portrait Epigraph in
26. The translation is a modified version of that conflates Helius Eobanus Hessus, a poet, the Age of Erasmus and Dürer,” Renaissance
in Charles W. Talbot Jr., “An Interpretation scholar, and translator of Theocritus active Quarterly 66, no. 2 (2013): 530–40.
of Two Paintings by Cranach in the Artist’s predominantly in Erfurt, with Johann Heß, 35. Werner, “Veil of Venus,” 106–8.
Late Style,” Report and Studies in the History of a Wittenberg-educated Protestant theologian 36. See Dagmar Eichberger, Leben mit Kunst, Wirken
Art 1 (1967): 81. The inscription’s meaning active in Breslau (modern-day Wrocław). On durch Kunst: Sammelwesen und Hofkunst unter
depends on whether the adjective caecus is his cooperation with the poet Caspar Ursi- Margarete von Österreich, Regentin der Niederlande
understood transitively or intransitively (i.e., nus Velius and the latter’s epigrams on Cra- (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002). On Kunstkammers,
“blind” or “blinding”). Following the stylistic nach’s paintings that he commissioned, see see Julius von Schlosser, Die Kunst- und Wunder-
tendency of classical Latin verse that no more Georg Bauch, “Analekten zur Biographie des kammern der Spätrenaissance (Leipzig: Klinkhardt
than one complement should accompany each Johann Hess,” Korrespondenzblatt des Vereins für and Biermann, 1908); and Thomas DaCosta

116 | Princeton University Art Museum Record | volume 77–78

 Kaufmann, “From Mastery of the World to 45. “Nate effrons homines superos que lacessere 226. On Simonides’s famous conceptualiza-
Mastery of Nature: The Kunstkammer, Poli- suet, non matri parcis: parcito, ne pereas.” tion of painting as “mute poetry,” see Plut.,
tics, and Science,” in The Mastery of Nature: Translation after Larry Silver, “Figure nude, his- Mor. 346F; and Leonard Barkan, Mute Poetry,
Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renais- torie e poesie: Jan Gossaert and the Renaissance Speaking Pictures (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
sance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Nude in the Netherlands,” Nederlands kunsthis- versity Press, 2013), 28–30.
Press, 1993), 174–94. torisch jaarboek 37 (1986): 14. 52. One of the basic rules of textual criticism,
37. Philipp Engelbrecht, Illustrissimi principis Joan- 46. On the inscription and the painting’s possible which presupposes that a more difficult lec-
nis ducis Saxoniae . . . Epithalamium (Wittenberg, provenance in Philip of Burgundy’s collection, tion tends to be replaced by a simpler one;
1514). see Schrader, “Gossart’s Mythological Nudes,” see W. L. Lorimer, “Lectio Difficilior,” Classi-
38. Jakob Rosenberg, “Lucas Cranach the Elder: 61. cal Review 48, no. 5 (1934): 171.
A Critical Appreciation,” Record of the Princeton 47. See Koch, “Venus and Amor,” 56; Heckscher, 53. The inscription’s “correctness” becomes even
University Art Museum 28, no. 1 (1969): 45–46; “Petites perceptions,” 115–16. more questionable if one realizes that the Han-
Heckscher, “Petites perceptions,” 116. 48. The painting’s status in Cranach’s oeuvre nover version also fails to avoid the incongru-
39. On epithalamia, see Eleni Contiades-Tsitsoni, remains contested; see Hinz, “Aktmalerei ous spondee instead of a regular dactyl in the
Hymenaios und Epithalamion: Das Hochzeitslied in bei Cranach,” 45, 53. For an illustration of the first foot after the pentameter’s caesura.
der frühgriechischen Lyrik (Stuttgart: B. G. Teub- painting, see the related entry in the Cranach 54. For illustrations of the Berlin and Besançon
ner, 1990). Digital Archive, http://lucascranach.org /DE paintings, see their entries in the Cranach
40. See Svetlana Leontief Alpers, “Ekphrasis and _NLMH_PAM1031. A painting with the same Digital Archive, http: //lucascranach.org/
Aesthetic Attitudes in Vasari’s Lives,” Journal of inscription was acquired by Cardinal Mazarin DE _smbGG _1190 and http://lucascranach
the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23, nos. 3– in 1648 and misattributed to Lucas van Leyden; .org /FR_MBAAB_896-1-56, respectively. For
4 (July– December 1960): 190–215; W. J. T. see the 1661 inventory entry in Gabriel Cosnac the Branicki painting, now registered as lost
Mitchell, “Ekphrasis and the Other,” in Picture and Antoine de Bordeaux, eds., Les richesses du Nazi loot, and its inscription that replaces
Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation Palais Mazarin (Paris: Renouard, 1884), 312: the opening “Dum” with “Tuum,” see Janina
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), “No. 1054. Un authre [tableau] faict par Luc Michałkowa, “Autour de l’amour: À propos
151– 81; and Jaś Elsner, Roman Eyes: Visuality d’Holande, sur bois, representant une Vénus de deux tableaux au Musée National de Var-
and Subjectivity in Art and Text (Princeton, NJ: avecq un voile et un Cupidon à son costé, hault sovie,” Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie 13,
Princeton University Press, 2007). de cinq pieds trois poulces et large de deux no. 1 (1972): 86–88; and its Cranach Digital
41. Engelbrecht, Epithalamium, [42]. pieds cinq poulces, garny de sa petite bordure Archive entry: https://lucascranach.org/PRI-
42. Disturbing as it is for a modern viewer, incest de bois doré, prisé la somme de 500 livres.” VATE_NONE-P124.
imagery played an important role in Renais- See also André Félibien, Entretiens sur les vies et 55. In the Berlin painting’s inscription, the word
sance representations of Venus and Cupid; sur les ouvrages des plus excellens peintres anciens et eciam appears instead of etiam, thus diverging
for Pontormo’s composition and its Floren- modernes (Paris: Mabre-Cramoisy, 1672), 2:346, from the text inscribed on other honeybee ver-
tine display context, see Stephen Campbell, followed by Isaac Bullart, Académie des sciences et sions, such as that in the Galleria Borghese
The Cabinet of Eros (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni- des arts, contenant les vies, & les éloges historiques (see fig. 3). See Heydenreich, Lucas Cranach,
versity Press, 2004), 265. While the scholar des hommes illustre (Amsterdam: Elzevier, 1682), 291–93.
emphasizes the importance of the theme of 397. 56. Weyer, Beschreibung, no. 44; see also Hiltrud
natural fertility associated with Lucretius and 49. Translation after Heckscher, “Petites percep- Kier and Frank Günter Zehnder, eds., Lust
Columella, the emphasis on the “treacheries tions,” 116; Michael Wolfson, Die deutschen und und Verlust: Kölner Sammler zwischen Trikolore
of love” resonates with Apuleius’s scene of niederländischen Gemälde bis 1550 (Hannover: Nie- und Preussenadler, vol. 2, Corpus-Band zu Kölner
Venus kissing Cupid while plotting against dersächsisches Landesmuseum, 1992), 56. For Gemäldesammlungen, 1800–1860 (Cologne: Wien-
Psyche in Apul., Met. 4.31.3: “osculis hiantibus the Greek inscription, Bullart’s seventeenth- and, 1998), 455.
filium diu ac pressule saviata” (so saying she century transcription (Académie des sciences et 57. Hes., Theog. 176–206.
kissed her son long and intensely with parted des arts, 397), despite its errors, serves as a 58. For an analysis of the ejaculatory connota-
lips). Translation after John Arthur Hanson, basis for me to propose an amended reading: tions of creative acts in the Princeton paint-
Apuleius: Metamorphoses (Cambridge, MA: Har- “Αὶδοῖη μὲν Κύπρις ἔγω, Μνήστωρ δὲ ὀπᾱδός ing and Marcel Duchamp’s Paysage fautif, see
vard University Press, 1996), 1:198–99. /ἐστι[ν] [ἔ]ρως χρῆ[ς] χάρμα γε φυζά[κ]ι[ν] Matthias Krüger, Christine Ott, and Ulrich
43. For the inventory, see J. Sterk, Philips van ον [εἶναι]” (I am bashful Cypris, Eros is my Pfisterer, “Das Denkmodell einer ‘Biologie
Bourgondie (Zutphen: Walburg Pers., 1980), servant, mindful of necessity that delight be der Kreativität’: Anthropologie, Ästhetik und
269–316. On the relationship between Philip fleeting). Naturwissen der Moderne,” in Die Biologie der
of Burgundy and Gossart, see Stephanie 50. Confusion between types n and u/v in antique Kreativität: Ein produktionsästhetisches Denkmodell
Schrader, “Gossart’s Mythological Nudes font were a common misreading in the Renais- in der Moderne, ed. Matthias Krüger, Christine
and the Shaping of Philip of Burgundy’s Erotic sance ; see, for example, “antomata” instead Ott, and Ulrich Pfisterer (Zurich: Diaphanes
Identity,” in Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: of “automata” in A. Politian’s preface to Leon Verlag, 2013), 8–12.
Jan Gossart’s Renaissance; The Complete Works, ed. Battista Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria (Florence: 59. For the aesthetic impact of the painting’s fame
Maryan W. Ainsworth, exh. cat. (New York: Nicolaus Laurentius Alamanus, 1485), n.p. on ancient and post medieval writing and
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010), 57–61. On Given that I am not aware of any surviving writ- art making, see Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth
Meit’s career in the Netherlands, see Renate ten record of the Princeton inscription before Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculp-
Eikelmann, ed., Conrat Meit: Bildhauer der Renais- Félibien’s publication (Entretiens sur les vies, ture: A Handbook of Sources (London: H. Miller,
sance; “Desgleichen ich kein gesehen —,” exh. cat. 2:346), this hypothesis remains unverified. 2010), 59; Kathryn Gutzwiller, “Apelles and
(Munich: Hirmer, 2006). 51. Gerard Geldenhouwer (1482–1542), biog- the Painting of Language,” Revue de philologie,
44. Sterk, Philips van Bourgondie, 58– 60, 136, 173, rapher of Philip of Burgundy, quoted in de littérature et d’histoire anciennes 83, no. 1 (2009):
264, 315–16. Ainsworth, Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures, 39–63; and Verity J. Platt, “Orphaned Objects:

Musiał | Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Venus and Cupid | 117

 The Phenomenology of the Incomplete in 66. Philip Melanchthon, “Prologue to Terence’s was famously analyzed by Michel Foucault in
Pliny’s Natural History,” Art History 41, no. 3 Phormio” (dated to ca. 1525) in Philippi Melanch- Ceci n’est pas une pipe: Deux lettres et quatre dessins
(2018): 492–517. thonis Opera quae supersunt omnia, Carminum liber de René Magritte (Montpellier: Fata Morgana,
60. Ov., Trist. 2.527–28: “sic madidos siccat digi- primus, ed. Carolus Gottlieb Bretschneider 1973).
tis Venus uda capillos et modo maternis tecta (Halle: C. A. Schwetschke, 1842), 10:500–501: 75. Bonnet, “Lucas Cranach,” 41.
videtur aquis.” Translation after Arthur Leslie “Dixisse quondam fertur Attica civitas, / Natos 76. Ov., Met. 1.452–76. Among the motifs in Cra-
Wheeler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Menandri Comici lepidos sales / Illa ex salis nach’s oeuvre that are based on stories in the
Press, 1996), 94. Ovid’s Tristia was available in spuma, Venus qua dicitur / exorta, primum Metamorphoses are Diana and Actaeon, and the
the early sixteenth century through the 1499 ex Oceana cum prodiit” (The Attic city is held Golden and Silver Ages.
Aldine Press publication edited by Bartholo- to have once claimed that the inborn charm- 77. Ov., Met. 1.461– 62. This and the following
meaus Merula; see Gabriel Fuchs, “Renais- ing [Attic] salt of Menander the comedian translations after Allen Mandelbaum, trans.,
sance Receptions of Ovid’s Tristia” (PhD diss., [derived] from the salty foam from which The Metamorphoses of Ovid (San Diego: Harcourt,
Ohio State University, 2013), 53–54. For other Venus is said to be born, as she emerged from 1993), 21.
mentions of Venus Anadyomene by Ovid, the sea for the first time). For contemporary 78. Ov., Met. 1.468–71.
see Ov., Am. 1.14.33–34, Tr. 2.527–28, and Pont. associations of salt’s preserving power with 79. This translation is a modified version of that
4.1.29; see also Philip Hardie, “Approximative the notion of perpetuity and evading time, see in Leeman, “Textual Source,” 274. See also
Similes in Ovid: Incest and Doubling,” Dic- Erasmus, Adagia, ed. Robert Bland (London: Coliva and Aikema, Cranach, 202–4; and Hanne
tynna: Revue de poétique latine 1 (2004): 6–7. T. Egerton, 1814), 1:134–35. Kolind Poulsen, “Fläche, Blick und Erinner-
61. William H. Heckscher, Art and Literature: Stud- 67. Bonnet, “Lucas Cranach,” 42–43. ung: Cranachs Venus und Cupido als Honigdieb im
ies in Relationship, ed. Egon Verheyen (Baden- 68. Plin., HN 35.36. I follow Aristotle’s understand- Licht der Bildtheologie Luthers,” in Schade,
Baden: V. Koerner, 1994), 449–50. ing of mimesis as imitation in poetry and the Lucas Cranach, 130–43.
62. Plin., HN 35.36.103. visual arts that is a source of pleasure derived 80. This famous paroemia, known throughout
63. An analogous point was made by Cicero, from humans’ predisposition for mimicry in the medieval period, is ultimately derived
emphasizing the intentionality of Apelles’s everyday life. This does not presuppose, how- from Hippocratean Aphorism 1.1. See W. H.
depiction of the Anadyomene as superior ever, that an act of imitation will produce a Jones, trans., Hippocrates, vol. 4, On the Universe
to accidental brushstrokes. Cic., Div. 1.23: faithful representation of its antecedent. See (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press;
“Adspersa temere pigmenta in tabula oris lin- Arist., Poet. 4.1448b; and Elizabeth C. Mans- London: W. Heinemann, 1931), 98–99.
iamenta efficere possunt; num etiam Veneris field, Too Beautiful to Picture: Zeuxis, Myth, and 81. This might shed light on several cases in which
Coae pulchritudinem effici posse adspersione Mimesis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Cranach presented Cupid on a stone plinth
fortuita putas?” (It is possible for paints flung Press, 2007), 174. that constrains his movements (see, for exam-
at a panel randomly to form the outline of a 69. Christopher S. Wood, “The Credulity Prob- ple, his paintings in the Scottish National Gal-
face; but you don’t think, do you, that the lem,” in Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in lery, Edinburgh; the Philadelphia Museum of
beauty of the Coan Venus could be produced Europe and China, 1500–1800, ed. Peter N. Miller Art; the Jack and Belle Linsky Collection in the
through a chance scattering of paint?). Trans- and François Louis (Ann Arbor: University of Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Compton
lation after Gutzwiller, “Apelles and the Paint- Michigan Press, 2012), 149–79. Verney Art Gallery and Park, Warwickshire).
ing of Language,” 61. 70. “Cernere spirantes ut videare viros” (You The plinth, consistently inscribed with the
64. Engelbrecht, Epithalamium, [44]. could believe you look at breathing men). artist’s monogram, evokes through its asso-
65. The image of the half-painted Anadyomene Engelbrecht, Epithalamium, [44]. The inscrip- ciation with sculpture numerous ancient anec-
seems to be in itself a conflation of Pliny’s tion on the portrait of Scheurl, in the reposi- dotes about mortals falling in love with works
account of two versions of the painting: one tory of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum of art, including Aphrodite of Knidos and the
in Rome that was half damaged, and the Cos in Nuremberg, reads: “Si Scheurlus tibi notus Parium Eros by Praxiteles, both described
version, which was unfinished upon his death. est, viator / Quis Scheurlus magis est an hic an in Pliny (HN 36.4). See David Freedberg, The
See the poem’s opening: “Dimidia pictam me ille.” Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of
parte reliquit Apelles, / Tota sed Lucae fulgeo 71. On the experience of artistic epiphanies, see Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
picta manu / Vel melior Lucas, vel erit tamen Verity J. Platt, Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Rep- 1989), 346–50; and Maurizio Bettini, The Por-
alter Apelles, / Qui totam ex manca pingere resentation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Reli- trait of the Lover, trans. Laura Gibbs (Berkeley:
parte potest” (Apelles abandoned me painted gion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, University of California Press, 1999), 61–64.
in half, yet I shine in my entirety thanks to 2011), 77–91. 82. On Lutheran picture theory’s tendency to
the hand of Lucas. Either Lucas is greater or 72. Werner, “Veil of Venus,” 104–7. divorce images from the materiality of physi-
will even become the second Apelles, who 73. The emphasis on the liquid-like quality of cal referents, see Poulsen, “Fläche, Blick und
can create a whole out from a lacking part). transparent veils is explored by Cranach in his Erinnerung,” 138–39: “Beim lutherischen Bild
Johann Stigel, “In Venerem Kranachii,” in representations of sleeping nymphs in spring. dagegen ist die Bedeutung nicht mehr an von
Poematum Jo. Stigelii Gothani (1577), ed. Adam See the Bremen version, in which the folds of der Physis des Bildes abhängig, sie wird im
Siber, vol. 1, Epigrammata varia liber secundus, the veil on the nymph’s arm visually echo the Intellekt des Betrachters konstruiert — sie
231[v]– 232[r]. For the literary context of water jet in the background, in the Cranach wird eingeprägt” (For Lutheran images the
Cranach-praising epigrams, see Jörg Robert, Digital Archive: http://lucascranach.org /DE meaning is no longer dependent on the paint-
“Die Wahrheit hinter dem Schleier: Lucas _BRD -KHB_935-1966-7. ing’s physicality. Instead, it is construed and
Cranachs heidnische Götter und die human- 74. This illusionistic signature plays a compa- imprinted in the beholder’s intellect). Also
istische Mythenallegorese,” in Lucas Cranach: rable function to René Magritte’s disclaimer, compare the discussion of the painting as
Glaube, Mythologie und Moderne; Eine Ausstellung “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe) “cipher” and the blank backgrounds’ effect of
des Bucerius Kunst Forums, ed. Werner Schade, on his 1929 painting The Treachery of Images “non-presence” in the context of Lutheran the-
exh. cat. (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2003), 113. (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), which ology in Joseph L. Koerner, Reformation of the

118 | Princeton University Art Museum Record | volume 77–78

 Image (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, her attention from them, the crucial differ- in Luther’s Marriage: Theology and Morality
2004), 182–84, 237–42. For contemporary sex- ence is that the process, which Freud treated in Reformation Polemics,” The Sixteenth Century
ualized perceptions of ancient phantasmata, as a substitutive “sexual aberration,” served Journal 34, no. 2 (2003): 319–45.
see Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), attributed in the sixteenth-century viewing context a 86. Sergiusz Michalski, The Reformation and the
to Francesco Colonna, a copy of which was precisely active role of a desired purification Visual Arts: The Protestant Image in Western and
available at Wittenberg University thanks to mechanism. Eastern Europe (New York: Routledge, 1993),
the Saxon court’s connection with Aldine 84. Jörg Robert goes so far as to compare 14–42; Christiane Anderson, “Protestant
Press. In this allegorical dream, the main char- the allure of Cranach’s Venuses with the Paintings: Artworks by Lucas Cranach and
acter is immersed in a multilayered dream that appearance of Helen of Troy on a demonic His Workshop,” in Protestant Aesthetics and the
is based on a constant strife between his love mirror in the story of Dr. Faustus. Jörg Arts, ed. Sarah Covington and Kathryn Rekls
for Polia and hypnotizing quests for classical Robert, “Dämonie der Technik: die (New York: Routledge, 2020), 41–56.
antiquities. See Michael Liebmann, “On the Medien des D. Johann Fausten,” in Kunst der 87. Susan C. Karant-Nunn and Merry E. Wiesner-
Iconography of the Nymph of the Fountain by Tauschung: über Status und Bedeutung von ästhe- Hanks, eds., Luther on Women: A Sourcebook
Lucas Cranach the Elder,” Journal of the Warburg tischer und dämonischer Illusion in der Frühen Neuzeit (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968): 434–37. (1400–1700) in Italien und Frankreich, ed. Kirsten 2003), 128.
83. This observation might resemble the notion Dickhaut (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016), 88. Roland M. Frye, Milton’s Imagery and the Visual
of sublimation as described by Sigmund 373– 96. Arts: Iconographic Tradition in the Epic Poems
Freud: “The progressive concealment of the 85. Lyndal Roper, “Venus in Wittenberg: Cranach, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
body which goes along with civilization keeps Luther, and Sensuality,” in Ideas and Cultural 1978), 276. Frye’s argument largely relies on
sexual curiosity awake. . . . It can, however, Margins in Early Modern Germany: Essays in Honor the inclusion of an apple-like tree in the back-
be diverted (‘sublimated’) in the direction of H. C. Erik Midelfort, ed. Marjorie E. Plummer ground of the London Honeybee Venus (Cupid
of art, if its interest can be shifted away from (Farnham, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, Complaining to Venus [1526–27]; National Gal-
the genitals on to the shape of the body as a 2009), 81–98. For Luther’s unorthodox take on lery, London), even though it does not feature
whole.” Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexu- bigamy and union through physical love, see in other variants of the scene.
ality, trans. and ed. James Strachey (1905; New Heiko Oberman, Luther: Man between God and 89. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nurem-
York: Basic Books, 1963), 22. While Cranach’s the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart berg, “Zwischen Venus und Luther: Cranachs
image seems to confront the viewer with the (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), Medien der Verführung,” Kultur lebendig 11,
goddess’s genitals rather than divert his or 272–97; and Thomas Fudge, “Incest and Lust no. 1 (2015): 1–3.

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Notes on the Contributors

Maryan Ainsworth, until recently Alvaro from Donatello to Picasso (1993); Santa Maria long eighteenth century. A graduate in classics
Saieh Curator of European Paintings at the del Fiore: Il Duomo di Firenze e la Vergine Incinta from Cambridge and in art history from the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, is now Curator (1999); Caravaggio e La Tour: La Luce Occulta University of Warsaw, he pursued internships
Emerita. She received her BA and MA in art di Dio (2000); Visible Spirit: The Art of Gianlorenzo at the Frick Collection, the Morgan Library, and
history from Oberlin College and her PhD from Bernini (2007–09); and Bernini at St. Peter’s: The the Princeton University Art Museum.
Yale. During her forty-three-year career at the Pilgrimage (2012). He was knighted Cavaliere
Met, Ainsworth specialized in the technical dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia by the Italian Sarah Rapoport is a doctoral student in
examination of paintings and trained more government in 2019. History of Art at Yale University, specializing
than twenty-five Slifka Fellows in technical in nineteenth-century European art and visual
art history. She has served as adjunct profes- Yifu Liu is a PhD candidate in the Department culture with a focus on Britain and France. She
sor at Barnard College and has lectured and of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University. received her BA in Art & Archaeology from
published widely on her work. Among the His dissertation focuses on the representa- Princeton University. She has held curator-
award-winning books of which she is the sole or tion of Chinese architecture in cross-cultural ial internships at the Frick, the Philadelphia
a major contributing author are Petrus Christus: exchanges between the sixteenth and the Museum of Art, the Princeton University Art
Renaissance Master of Bruges (1994); From Van eighteenth century. He was a doctoral fellow at Museum, and the Huntington. Prior to joining
Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural the doctoral program at Yale, she served as the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (1998); Gerard David: History in San Francisco. Liu previously worked Louise Bourgeois 12-Month Intern in Draw-
Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition (1998); at the Brooklyn Museum, the Morgan Library, ings and Prints at the Museum of Modern Art,
Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s and the Princeton University Art Museum. New York.
Renaissance (2010); German Paintings in The Met-
ropolitan Museum of Art, 1350–1600 (2013); and Erene Rafik Morcos is a PhD candidate in the Charles Scribner III received his PhD from
Grand Design: Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Renais- Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton Princeton in 1977, was an instructor in the
sance Tapestry (2014). Ainsworth is currently University. After receiving her bachelor’s degree Department of Art & Archaeology, and joined
completing the online entries for the Met’s early from Yale University, she worked as a curatorial the family publishing house Charles Scribner’s
Netherlandish paintings and a book on Jan van assistant in the Manuscripts Department at Sons, founded in 1846. His books include The
Eyck’s Crucifixion and Last Judgment. the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Thereafter, Triumph of the Eucharist: Tapestries by Rubens
she served as a researcher at Dr. Jörn Günther (1982), Rubens (1989), Bernini (1991), The
J. S. (Suzie) Hermán is a PhD candidate in the Antiquariat in Basel, Switzerland. At Princeton, Shadow of God (2006), and Home by Another
Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton Morcos’s research interests center on manu- Route (2016). Following a successful undercover
University and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at scripts and the visuality of multilingualism. Her operation to recover a stolen Rubens with US
the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. In 2021–22 she dissertation focuses on the Greco-Latin Psalter. Special Agents in Miami in 1991, he appeared
will work as a guest researcher at Leiden Univer- She is the recipient of the 2022 Samuel H. Kress in two TV documentaries: The Rubens Robbers
sity’s Center for the Arts in Society. Hermán’s Foundation/Donald and Maria Cox Rome Prize (BBC, 2003) and Miami Sting (Sky/Arts, 2007).
work focuses on early modern art and architec- at the American Academy in Rome, where she His web page is charlesscribner.com.
ture. Her dissertation, “The Art World of the is currently a fellow in Medieval Studies.
Hanse,” considers the material legacy of Hanse
merchants and explores the Low Countries as Aleksander Musiał is a PhD candidate
a cultural crossroad. in the Department of Art & Archaeology
at Princeton University. An awardee of the
Irving Lavin (1927–2019), Professor Emeritus Paul Mellon Predoctoral Dissertation Fellow-
in the School of Historical Studies at the Insti- ship at the Center for Advanced Study in the
tute for Advanced Study, wrote extensively on Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art,
the history of art from late antiquity to modern Washington, DC, he specializes in the early
times, focusing primarily on the correlation modern reception of antiquities. His doctoral
between form and meaning. His many books thesis, “Immersion: Classical Reception and
include Bernini and the Crossing of St. Peter’s Eastern European Transformations of Hygiene
(1968); Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts Architecture,” explores the use of the classi-
(1980); Past–Present: Essays on Historicism in Art cal past in shaping bodies and identities in the

190 | Princeton University Art Museum Record | volume 77–78

Photography Credits

“Bernini and the Figura Serpentinata: A Drawing “‘More “Boschian” than Bosch’: Christ before fig. 18: Courtesy Saint Louis Art Museum
Given to the Princeton University Art Museum Pontius Pilate,” by Yifu Liu fig. 19: After Maryan W. Ainsworth, “Northern
by Charles Scribner III in Honor of Professor figs. 2, 14: Scala /Art Resource, NY Renaissance Drawings and Underdrawings:
Irving Lavin,” by Irving Lavin figs. 3, 15, 17, 20, 22: Museu de Belles Arts de A Proposed Method of Study,” Master Drawings
fig. 2: Courtesy Boehman Collection Valencia 27, no. 1 (1989): p. 9, fig. 5. Courtesy Molly Faries
fig. 3: Courtesy Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam figs. 4, 18, 23: Museum of Fine Arts Ghent / fig. 20: After Max J. Friedländer, Henri Pauwels,
figs. 4a,b: Scala / Art Resource artinflanders.be, photo: Dominique Provost Anne-Marie Hess, and Heinz Norden, The
fig. 5: © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020 figs. 6, 13: Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid / Antwerp Mannerists, Adriaen Ysenbrant, Early
fig. 9: photo: The Warburg Institute HIP /Art Resource, NY Netherlandish Painting 11 (Leyden: Sijthoff;
fig. 10: After Aby Warburg, Images from the figs. 7, 9–10: © Bosch Research and Conservation Brussels: La Connaissance, 1974), plate 72,
Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America, Project (photography: Rik Klein Gotink; image no. 70. Courtesy Marquand Library of Art and
trans. Michael P. Steinberg (Ithaca: Cornell processing: Robert G. Erdmann) Archaeology, Princeton University
University Press, 1995), fig. 1. Courtesy Firestone fig. 8: Courtesy National Gallery of Art,
Library, Princeton University Washington, DC “Saint Jerome in His Cell: Reexamining a
fig. 12: Erich Lessing /Art Resource, NY Painting Attributed to the Workshop of Joos
“Bernini’s Cristo Vivo,” by Charles Scribner III van Cleve,” by Sarah Rapoport
figs. 1, 7: photo: Bruce M. White “Reconsidering an Early Sixteenth-Century fig. 3: Norman Muller
fig. 3: The Picture Art Collection /Alamy Lamentation Attributed to the Workshop of fig. 4: After Micha Leeflang, Joos van Cleve:
Stock Photo Cornelis Engebrechtsz,” by J. S. Hermán A Sixteenth-Century Antwerp Artist and His
fig. 6: Courtesy the Walters Art Museum, fig. 2: Cultural Heritage Agency of the Workshop (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), p. 55,
Baltimore Netherlands / photo: C. J. Steenbergh fig. 2.33. © RKD Faries / Leeflang
fig. 8: Courtesy Art Institute of Chicago figs. 3–4: Courtesy Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden figs. 5, 9: Shawn Digney-Peer
figs. 5–6: After Jan Piet Filedt Kok, Walter S. fig. 6: Courtesy Norton Museum of Art
“New Discoveries: Selected Northern Gibson, and Yvette Bruijnen, Cornelis fig. 7: Courtesy Museum Catharijneconvent /
Renaissance Paintings at the Princeton Engebrechtsz: A Sixteenth-Century Leiden Artist photo: Ruben de Heer
University Art Museum,” by Maryan W. and His Workshop (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), fig. 11: Courtesy Art Institute of Chicago
Ainsworth p. 42, figs. 43, 44. Courtesy Marquand Library of fig. 12: © KIK-IRPA, Brussels
figs. 2, 5: © Museo Nacional del Prado Art and Archaeology, Princeton University
figs. 3, 9–10, 16: © Shawn Digney-Peer and figs. 7, 10, 13–16: Shawn Digney-Peer “Artful Foam: Social Functions and the Making
Princeton University Art Museum fig. 8: Courtesy Chazen Museum of Art, of Erotic Art in Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Venus
fig. 4: Courtesy of Sophie Scully University of Wisconsin–Madison and Cupid,” by Aleksander Musiał
fig. 8: © Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, fig. 9: © Photography Peter Cox / fig. 2: photo: NGC
Brussels / photo: J. Geleyns–Art Photography Bonnefantenmuseum, loan Cultural Heritage fig. 3: Scala / Ministero per I Beni e le Attività
fig. 11: Courtesy Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Agency of the Netherlands culturali /Art Resource, NY
fig. 17: Courtesy of Jannette Shindell fig. 11: After Catheline Périer-d’Ieteren, Colyn de fig. 4: After Anna Coliva and Bernard Aikema,
Coter et la technique picturale des peintres eds., Cranach: L’altro Rinascimento (Milan:
“The Mass of Saint Gregory: A ‘Dramatic flamands du XVe siècle (Brussels: Lefebvre et 24 ORE Cultura, 2010), 11. Courtesy Marquand
Close-Up’ of a Prolific Visual Tradition,” by Gillet, 1985), p. 321, fig. 223. Courtesy Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology, Princeton
Erene Rafik Morcos Library of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University
fig. 2: After Christie’s, Paris, Tableaux Anciens et University fig. 5: Shawn Digney-Peer
du XIXe siècle. 24 June 2004, lot 119 fig. 12: After G. J. Hoogewerff, De noord- figs. 6, 12: Scala / Art Resource, NY
fig. 3: Image courtesy Rafael Valls Gallery nederlandsche schilderkunst (’s-Gravenhage: fig. 7: Courtesy Toledo Museum of Art
figs. 8–9, 11, 13, 17–19: Shawn Digney-Peer M. Nijhoff, 1939), vol. 3, p. 337, fig. 178. Courtesy fig. 8: © Bayerisches Nationalmuseum München
fig. 21: Image © Art Gallery of Ontario Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology, fig. 9: © Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium,
figs. 22, 24: Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Princeton University Brussels / photo: J. Geleyns – Art Photography
Open Content Program fig. 17: Lorne Campbell, The Sixteenth Century
fig. 25: © Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Netherlandish Paintings, with French Paintings
Before 1600 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2014), p. 550. Courtesy Marquand Library of Art
and Archaeology, Princeton University

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