Currently not on view
Silenus Accompanied by a Satyr and a Faun,
ca. 1635
after Peter Paul Rubens, 1577–1640; born Siegen, Germany; died Antwerp, Belgium
The prints hanging on this wall have a common origin: The Drunken Silenus, painted by Peter Paul Rubens between 1616 and 1617. In Greek mythology, Silenus is the elderly companion and tutor of Dionysus, the god of wine. Since antiquity, artists have depicted the wise, fat, and constantly inebriated Silenus as a good-natured caution against overindulgence and the excesses of wine.
The woodcut by Jegher reproduces a simplified version of Rubens’s painting. Between 1633 and 1635, Rubens worked with Jegher to make woodcut versions of many of his painted compositions, for distribution in the booming international market for reproductive prints centered in Antwerp in the midseventeenth century.
The engraving by Bolswert reproduces—with some changes—The Triumphant Silenus, a painting by the youthful Anthony van Dyck, created when he was a pupil of Rubens. Van Dyck’s moralizing work preserves the striking image of a black man as one of the satyrs that is a feature of Rubens’s original composition but was eliminated from Jegher’s print.
Information
ca. 1635
Europe, Belgium, Antwerp
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Charles Le Blanc and Jacques-Charles Brunet, “Volume 2,” Manuel de l'amateur d'estampes: contenant le dictionnaire des graveurs de toutes les nations (Paris: É. Bouillon, 1856).
, no. 14, p. 427 -
F.W.H. Hollstein, “Heer-Kuyl,” Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings, and woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700 (Amsterdam: M. Hertzberger, 1953).
, no. 16 - "Acquisitions 1970", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 30, no. 1 (1971): p. 22-30.
- Peter B. Blanchard, Rona Goffen and David Steadman, Copies as originals: translations in media and techniques, (Princeton, NJ: Art Museum, Princeton University, 1974)., no. 5; p. 25 (illus.)
- John David Farmer, Rubens and Humanism (Birmingham, AL: Birmingham Museum of Art, 1978)., no. 14, p. 38
