Description: Black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash, heightened with white, on grey-brown paper, 415 x 318 mm. A triangular-shaped piece of paper inserted below Pomona’s right leg, on which the triangular piece of drapery between the knees and the dog has been drawn. A drawing on the verso is faintly visible when the sheet is held to the light. Ruled framing lines in black ink. Laid down. Mark of the Royal Collection (Lugt 1638). Numbered on the mount, in pen and brown ink, 1891 (Sparre).

Vertumnus approaching Pomona disguised as an old woman was a popular motif in Dutch 17th-century art. In the 18th century, this large, highly finished drawing was attributed to Lievens, and it has never been discussed in the modern scholarly literature. Pomona’s pose is similar to that of one of the muses in Lievens’s painting Five Muses in The Hague,  but otherwise there is no apparent connection to the oeuvre of that artist. The drawing relates more closely to the work of Bol, who treated the subject repeatedly, as Snickare pointed out.  In those cases, however, Pomona is not naked, but similar naked figures representing Venus are found in Bol’s mythological paintings. Snickare also noted the stylistic resemblance to the model drawings for his monumental paintings of the 1650s and early 1660s.  Especially in the foreground staffage, the outlines are drawn in the same elegant manner.

An alternative, and more convincing, attribution to Knüpfer has been suggested by Michiel Plomp (email). Comparable drawings are Diana and Nymphs in the Musée Fabre, Montpelier, and Ulysses and Nausicaa in Berlin.  The same model, including the hairstyle, is found in the painting of Venus in Oldenburg, and in a related drawing in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.  In both works, the same parasol as in the present drawing is suspended over the nude woman. [Magnusson, Dutch Drawings no. 222]

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Nicolaes Knüpfer | Vertumnus och Pomona | Nationalmuseum

Nicolaes Knüpfer | Vertumnus and Pomona | Nationalmuseum

Foto: Hans Thorwid / Nationalmuseum, CC BY SA 