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Lot Essay
This is the prime version of this subject by the German artist Hans Rottenhammer, and one of the most significant works from his Venetian sojourn of 1596-1606. He was the most influential of that group of German artists, mainly from Bavaria, who travelled to Italy, took up residence in Venice and absorbed the style of the great Venetian masters of the sixteenth century. It is largely due to Rottenhammer that a distinctive south German style, with Italianate overtones, can readily be discerned.
Before his stay in Venice, Rottenhammer had spent five years in Rome, from 1591 and 1595, where he befriended the landscape artists Paul Bril and Jan Breughel I. Known for his compositions with figures, Rottenhamer collaborated with Brill, painting the figures in several of the artist's landscape pictures. The monumental aspect of the present picture and its colours show the powerful influence Venetian painting had on Rottenhammer, yet the style of the figures still echoes his earlier Roman work.
A drawing in pen and brown ink in the Uffizi, Florence, is probably a first sketch for this picture (A. Petrioli Tofani, op. cit., 1988, p. 44, no. 54, fig. 51). Another drawing, signed and dated 1600, also in pen and brown ink, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, shows a variant of the present composition (T. DaCosta Kaufmann, op. cit., 1982-83, no. 31, illustrated). That the composition was successful is demonstrated by the fact that the artist made a version of the picture on copper, now in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth, no. B75/924.
Before his stay in Venice, Rottenhammer had spent five years in Rome, from 1591 and 1595, where he befriended the landscape artists Paul Bril and Jan Breughel I. Known for his compositions with figures, Rottenhamer collaborated with Brill, painting the figures in several of the artist's landscape pictures. The monumental aspect of the present picture and its colours show the powerful influence Venetian painting had on Rottenhammer, yet the style of the figures still echoes his earlier Roman work.
A drawing in pen and brown ink in the Uffizi, Florence, is probably a first sketch for this picture (A. Petrioli Tofani, op. cit., 1988, p. 44, no. 54, fig. 51). Another drawing, signed and dated 1600, also in pen and brown ink, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, shows a variant of the present composition (T. DaCosta Kaufmann, op. cit., 1982-83, no. 31, illustrated). That the composition was successful is demonstrated by the fact that the artist made a version of the picture on copper, now in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth, no. B75/924.