.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Jupiter and Antiope: the large Plate and a series of female nudes (see lot 68) mark the end of Rembrandt’s career as an etcher. Together they constitute a final highpoint: a small group of very rare, intimate and yet important prints. That Rembrandt, as he turned older, turned to erotic subjects is reminiscent of the aging Picasso, who over three hundred years later would live out his sexual fantasies in his final period as a printmaker. Yet it was Picasso aged 55, almost the same age as Rembrandt when he etched Jupiter and Antiope: the large Plate, who took direct inspiration from this print for one of his most poetically erotic etchings, Faune devoilant une Femme, in 1936. Rembrandt in turn had taken the subject and overall composition from Annibale Carracci’s etching of 1592, an impression of which he probably owned (see Bikker, 2014, p. 90). Even earlier, it was Leon Davent, probably after a lost design by Francesco Primaticcio, who first depicted Jupiter unveiling the sleeping Antiope in a print.
Rembrandt adopted the position of the figures from Carracci’s print, yet omitted the rather superfluous cupid and the landscape, thereby reducing and condensing the image on the tension between the two figures – or rather the effect the woman’s exposed body has on Jupiter. Yet, while Carracci’s satyric creature is decidedly lecherous, there is something wistful and melancholic about Rembrandt's elderly god. His expression is that of a man looking at something that no longer belongs to him, something remembered but lost. It must have been in Rembrandt’s character to see and depict his characters, whether they were gods, prophets and saints, burghers or beggars, as deeply human. This is true here not just for Jupiter, but also of Antiope, as Erik Hinterding has observed: ‘Rembrandt’s rendition of sleep in this etching is so convincing – the mouth open, the left arm completely relaxed – that one might almost suppose that he drew from a model who really was fast asleep.’ (Hinterding, 2000, p. 363) Clifford Ackley amusingly remarked that ‘one can almost hear her snoring’. (Ackley, 2003, p. 168)
According to Greek myth, Antiope was the daughter of King Nycteus of Thebes. Attracted by her beauty, Zeus - or Jupiter in Roman mythology – transformed into a satyr and seduced her. She later gave birth to twin sons: Amphion, son of Zeus, and Zethus, son of her husband Epopeus. Her complicated fate is subject of a fragmentary play by Euripides.
The first state of this print exists in a unique impression in the British Museum, London, while the two impressions of the third state, with an explanatory text in Dutch and French added to the plate, are certainly posthumous. The present sheet is a very fine impression, with considerable burr and rough, inky plate edges, of the second state.
Rembrandt adopted the position of the figures from Carracci’s print, yet omitted the rather superfluous cupid and the landscape, thereby reducing and condensing the image on the tension between the two figures – or rather the effect the woman’s exposed body has on Jupiter. Yet, while Carracci’s satyric creature is decidedly lecherous, there is something wistful and melancholic about Rembrandt's elderly god. His expression is that of a man looking at something that no longer belongs to him, something remembered but lost. It must have been in Rembrandt’s character to see and depict his characters, whether they were gods, prophets and saints, burghers or beggars, as deeply human. This is true here not just for Jupiter, but also of Antiope, as Erik Hinterding has observed: ‘Rembrandt’s rendition of sleep in this etching is so convincing – the mouth open, the left arm completely relaxed – that one might almost suppose that he drew from a model who really was fast asleep.’ (Hinterding, 2000, p. 363) Clifford Ackley amusingly remarked that ‘one can almost hear her snoring’. (Ackley, 2003, p. 168)
According to Greek myth, Antiope was the daughter of King Nycteus of Thebes. Attracted by her beauty, Zeus - or Jupiter in Roman mythology – transformed into a satyr and seduced her. She later gave birth to twin sons: Amphion, son of Zeus, and Zethus, son of her husband Epopeus. Her complicated fate is subject of a fragmentary play by Euripides.
The first state of this print exists in a unique impression in the British Museum, London, while the two impressions of the third state, with an explanatory text in Dutch and French added to the plate, are certainly posthumous. The present sheet is a very fine impression, with considerable burr and rough, inky plate edges, of the second state.