Currently not on view
The Triumph of Silenus,
after 1630
after Anthony van Dyck, 1599–1641; born Antwerp, Belgium; died London, England
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
after 1630
Europe, Belgium, Antwerp
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F.W.H. Hollstein, "Boekhorst-Bruegel," Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings, and woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700, (Amsterdam: M. Hertzberger, 1949-2010).
, no. 35 - "Acquisitions 1970", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 30, no. 1 (1971): p. 22-30., p. 25
- John David Farmer, Rubens and Humanism (Birmingham, AL: Birmingham Museum of Art, 1978)., cat. no. 4, p. 34
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Carl Depauw, Simon Turner, ed., "A. van Dyck," New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts, 1450-1700 (Rotterdam: Sound & Vision interactive; Amsterdam: The Rijksprentenkabinet, 2002).
, no. 519
