SPRANGER, Bartholomaeus

This painting illustrates a frequently depicted sentence by Terence: Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus - Without Ceres (bread) and Bacchus (wine) Venus freezes.

Spranger was one of the leading representative of the Mannerist style. As used by art historians, Mannerism implies above all a sophisticated art, fully aware of all the techniques of naturalistic representation but more concerned with artifice than with fidelity to nature. Spranger was appointed court painter to the Emperor Rudolph II in Vienna, and in 1581 moved with the imperial capital to Prague. As Rudolph’s art impresario, he designed the displays of the imperial collection - decorative objects, sculpture, prints - which were to influence artists throughout Northern Europe and the Iberian peninsula. Above all, he furnished erotic imagery to Rudolph’s taste, silken titillation couched in mythological or allegorical guise.

A less familiar aspect of Spranger’s work is this altarpiece possibly commissioned by Rudolph and given by him to a prince-bishop of Bamberg for his private chapel. The subject allows Spranger to show off the fully international range of his talent. In the darkened stable we can just make out rustic Flemish shepherds; the dog in the foreground has found a tasty morsel; the kings proffer goldsmith’s wares almost as elaborate, and just as detailed, as Pieter Bruegel’s or Jan Gossaert’s . These touches of Northern realism, however, are peripheral to the almost oppressive magniloquence of the main scene, more grandly Italianate than any Italian’s. As their elder bends down to kiss the infant’s foot, the two standing kings pose like ballet dancers in virtual mirror image of each other. All three are gorgeous in shot satins, acid harmonies of yellow highlights on red silk, blue shadows on pink. The red-haired king at the right is said to be an idealised self portrait of the artist. His regal bearing is echoed in the elaborate signature by the feet of the black king, which describes Spranger as born in Antwerp and painter to His Holy Majesty the Emperor.

In Greek mythology, Glaucus is a sea god, whilst Scylla is a nymph, a nymph who is the subject of Glaucus’s desires.

The mythological story depicted in the painting is the following.

For murdering his friend Iphitus in a fit of madness Hercules was sold as a slave to Omphale, queen of Lydia, for three years (Apollodorus 2.6:3). But she soon alleviated his lot by making him her lover. While in her service he grew effeminate, wearing women’s clothes and adornments, and spinning yarn.

In the cultural context of the court of Rudolf II, the meaning of this mythological subject is twofold: firstly, it alludes to the power of love exerted by a woman over a man according to a rather popular theme in Northern Europe; secondly, it symbolizes the alchemical fusion of the two genders, in accordance with the rather esoteric interests of the Emperor.

This drawing, carried out by Bartholomaeus Spranger during his extensive stay at the court of Emperor Rudolf II of Habsburg in Prague, depicts Hercules enslaved by the mythical queen of Lydia Omphale, who wears the pelt of the Nemean lion and brandishes a club as she forces the hero to twist the wool while dressed in women’s clothing.

The drawing was possibly drafted as a preparatory study for a painting of the same subject by the artist in 1585 which is currently displayed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

The story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus is narrated by Ovid in the fourth book of his Metamorphoses. Aphrodite and Hermes had a son, Hermaphroditus, together. He grew up to become an incredibly beautiful and masculine man. One day while he was in the woods, a nymph named Salmacis saw him and became so infatuated with him that she grabbed hold of him and refused to let go. She made a prayer to the gods to make them never part, and it happened! A hermaphrodite! A man with breasts, or alternative a woman with a penis. Either way it was the Greek way of explaining why one out of every fifty people was a hermaphrodite. Hermaphroditus later became friends with Dionysius and the two gods are considered to be the patron gods of all hermaphrodites.

Many artists like to portray Hermaphroditus as a woman raising up her skirts/robes to reveil a penis. Others like to portray the actual scene in which Salmacis sees and tackles Hermaphroditus, in a narrative format. The most famous however is a sleeping Hermaphroditus.

The stylistic source of inspiration for the three slender standing female figure s with rhythmic movement can be found in Parmigianino’s work which he was able to study during the short period he spent in Parma.

Circe is a goddess of magic or sometimes a nymph, enchantress or sorceress in Greek mythology. She is a daughter of the god Helios and either the Oceanid nymph Perse or the goddess Hecate. Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs. Through the use of these and a magic wand or staff, she would transform her enemies, or those who offended her, into animals.

The best known of her legends is told in Homer’s Odyssey when Odysseus visits her island of Aeaea on the way back from the Trojan War and she changes most of his crew into swine. He forces her to return them to human shape, lives with her for a year and has sons by her, including Latinus and Telegonus.

Circe is a goddess of magic or sometimes a nymph, enchantress or sorceress in Greek mythology. She is a daughter of the god Helios and either the Oceanid nymph Perse or the goddess Hecate. Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs. Through the use of these and a magic wand or staff, she would transform her enemies, or those who offended her, into animals.

The best known of her legends is told in Homer’s Odyssey when Odysseus visits her island of Aeaea on the way back from the Trojan War and she changes most of his crew into swine. He forces her to return them to human shape, lives with her for a year and has sons by her, including Latinus and Telegonus.

The painting depicts Christ surrounded by the instruments of his torture. A putto hovering above bears the sudarium of St. Veronica. Spranger is renowned for his ability to fuse his native Netherlandish tradition with the Italian Mannerist influences of his extensive European travels.

At the end of the 16th century the court of Emperor Rudolph II in Prague was one of the most important art and cultural centre of Europe. The Emperor gathered together important artists: painters, sculptors, goldsmiths, who developed a characteristic style as important as that of the Fontainebleau school flowered at the same period in France. One component of the Rudolphean style was the painting of the Flemish Spranger, another the German Hans von Aachen and the third the Swiss Joseph Heintz.

Spranger was in Paris at the age of nineteen with Primaticcio and Niccolò dell’Abbate. He worked in Parma, where Correggio and Parmigianino influenced him, then he spent eight years in Rome and in 1575 arrived to the court of Maximillian II and became court painter of Rudolph II in 1581.

Venus and Adonis is a late work by Spranger, a masterpiece of the Rudolphean Mannerism.

This typical Mannerist painting depicts Adonis taking leave of Venus. The two white turtledoves on the right and the small Cupid holding an arrow on the left symbolizes their love. In the right background a satyr hands a piece of fruit to a nymph, while on the right two satyrs and two nymphs return from the hunt. Depicting idealized figures, nude or otherwise, in contrasting poses was a predilection that Spranger shared with many artists working at Rudolph’s court in Prague.