Reclining Venus
Artist/Maker
Material / Technique
Dimensionsh x w: Mått 119 x 190 cm
Inventory numberNM 95
AcqusitionTransferred 1866 from Kongl. Museum
Other titlesTitel (sv): Liggande Venus Titel (en): Reclining Venus
DescriptionRes. Katalogtext: Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 114: FORMER INV. NOS.: 98 (B. 1830s); KM 1074. PROVENANCE: Byström 1852. BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 7 (as Liberi); Sander 1872–76, p. 112, no. 23 (as Liberi); NM Cat. 1958, p. 111 (as Liberi); Kunze 1929, in Thieme and Becker, XXIII, p. 185; NM Cat. 1990, p. 200 (as Liberi); Ruggeri 1996, no. 84, p. 222 (as anonymous); Aikema and Brown 1999, p. 533. Reclining Venus once belonged to the Byström Collection, and in its 19th-century catalogue this highly esteemed painting was referred to as a “Venus à la Tiziano, by Cavalier Liberi”.¹ The latter was the painter Pietro Liberi (1614–1687), born in Padua, but active mainly in Venice in the second half of the 17th century. After a series of adventurous trips around the Mediterranean in his youth, Liberi’s artistic career began in Rome, where he studied the works of Michelangelo, Raphael and Pietro da Cortona. Following an important and artistically inspiring stay in Florence, where he worked for the Medici family, Liberi returned to Venice. There he was eventually made a “Cavalier of St Mark” for his artistic merit,² hence the title of cavalier in the Byström Collection catalogue. Pietro Liberi’s profane works, with a taste for sensual and erotic themes, were much appreciated by private collectors at the time. The Nationalmuseum canvas, depicting the naked goddess of love, has been referred to as a possible work of Pietro Liberi, though from a painting of the same subject once in the Borghese Gallery in Rome and today preserved in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, attributed to the Dutch artist Lambert Sustris.³ The attribution to Pietro Liberi, however, is rejected by Ugo Ruggeri, who considers the Nationalmuseum’s Reclining Venus not an autograph work of Liberi, but a copy by an unknown artist of Sustris’s original.⁴ Lambert Sustris, Italianized as “Alberto d’Olanda”, was born in Amsterdam, but left the city at a young age and went to Italy. There he was mainly active in Veneto, where he entered the circle of Titian.⁵ The Reclining Venus in the Rijksmuseum is an early work by Sustris, and the model for it is clearly the famous Venus of Urbino by Titian at the Uffizi Gallery, though represented in a more northern manner.⁶ Compared with Titian’s work, in Sustris’s personal interpretation, as in the Nationalmuseum copy, Venus is depicted on a bed strewn with roses, in a slightly more raised reclining position. The background shows a lady playing a spinet in addition to the maids at the chest, and by the open loggia a couple are talking confidentially while admiring the red evening sky. The roses, the couple by the loggia and the harmony that comes from music are all symbols of conjugal love expressed in the painting.⁷ Other versions of the original at the Rijksmuseum are known today, such as the canvas preserved in the Borghese Gallery in Rome, although that painting is considered a 19th-century copy commissioned to replace the original by Lambert Sustris which left the gallery during that period.⁸ se 1 RA, E I a: 280 Finansdep. Konseljakt, ärende nr. II, 1852-05-26, Katalog öfver framlidne Professor J. N. Byströms Tafvel-Samling, no. 98 “Venus à la Tiziano af Cavaliere Liberi, 1500 Rdr Banco”. 2 “Liberi, Pietro”, in La pittura in Italia. Il Seicento, II, Milan, 1988, p. 786; Ruggeri 1996, pp. 3–52. 3 Lambert Sustris, attributed to, Reclining Venus, oil on canvas, 116 x 186, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. A 3479. 4 Ruggeri 1996, no. 84, p. 222. 5 Ballarin 1962, pp. 61– 81. 6 Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538, oil on canvas, 119 x 165, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, inv. no. 1437. 7 Aikema and Brown 1999, p. 533. 8 Wethey 1975, p. 204. 19th century, Reclining Venus, oil on canvas, 118 x 180 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome, inv. no. 50. Apart from the two copies in the Nationalmuseum and the Galleria Borghese, other versions of Sustris’s original are a canvas published in The Connoisseur (XXXIV, no. 134, 1912, p. 112), another that was once in Amsterdam (De Zon sale, 9 April 1963), and a third, previously in the Campi Collection in Florence. One copy (possibly a fourth) was sold at Christie’s Amsterdam, European Noble and Private Collections, 24–25 June 2008 (sale cat. 2008), no. 657, p. 264, After Lambert Sustris, Reclining Venus in an Interior, oil on canvas, 117.2 x 181.8. [End]
Motif categoryReligion/Mythology
Collection
TechniquePainting
Object category
Keyword