Cimon and Iphigenia

Details

WILLEM VAN MIERIS (LEIDEN 1662-1747)
Cimon and Iphigenia
signed and dated 'W. VAN MIERIS. FECIT. ANNO. 1713' (lower center)
oil on canvas
27 5⁄8 x 23 7⁄8 in. (70.1 x 60.5 cm.)

Provenance

P. Cauw, Leiden; his sale, Luchtmans, Leiden, 24 August 1768, lot 12.
Anonymous sale, De Winter & Yver, Amsterdam, 12 February 1770, lot 1.
Private collection, France.
with Haboldt & Co., New York, by 1998.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, New York, 7 June 2002, lot 74, where acquired by the present owner.

Literature

C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the most eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century based on the work of John Smith, X, London, 1928, p. 136, no. 128.
A. Pigler, Barockthemen: eine Auswahl von Verzeichnissen zur Ikonographie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, II, Budapest, 1974, p. 454.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

This subject derives from an episode in Boccaccio's Decameron (5:1), in which Cimon, the son of a nobleman, falls in love with the maiden Iphigenia and finally marries her after a series of misfortunes. Here, the artist has chosen to depict the moment when Cimon first sets eyes on Iphigenia as she lies asleep beside a fountain in a woodland setting. The story was a popular theme and Willem van Mieris painted the subject on several occasions; another example, with a nearly identical sleeping figural group but in reverse, is in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan (inv. no. 4735).

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