The Nymph of the Spring
Lucas Cranach the Elderafter 1537
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Washington, DC, United States
A note of ambiguity or unease often gives a piquant quality to German adaptations of the Renaissance ideal. Cranach's painting of a classical nymph represents an Italian theme but gives it a moralizing twist common to late Gothic courtly and amorous subjects.
The nymph reclines beside a spring, perhaps a reference to a legendary ancient Roman fountain with which a Latin verse was associated. The text was translated by Alexander Pope in 1725:
Nymph of the grot, these springs I keep, And to the murmurs of these waters sleep; Ah, spare my slumbers, gently tread the cave! And drink in silence, or in silence lave!
The inscription on this painting -- I am the nymph of the sacred spring, do not disturb my sleep. I am resting -- may be an allusion to the poem. Though exposed by modern scholarship as a fifteenth-century counterfeit, the poem influenced Italian garden decoration, which not infrequently included fountains with attendant reclining nymphs. However, the proportions of Cranach's nude are more Gothic than classical, and the robe on which she rests her head is that of a German court lady. Far from sleeping, she admires herself beguilingly through lowered eyelids. The painting is intended both as an enticement and a warning to Cranach's sophisticated patrons.
More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication _German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries_, which is available as a free PDF <u>https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/german-painting-fifteenth-through-seventeenth-centuries.pdf</u>
- Title: The Nymph of the Spring
- Creator: Lucas Cranach the Elder
- Date Created: after 1537
- Physical Dimensions: overall: 48.4 x 72.8 cm (19 1/16 x 28 11/16 in.) framed: 62.9 x 87.6 cm (24 3/4 x 34 1/2 in.)
- Provenance: Probably Baron von Schenck, Flechtingen Castle, near Magdeburg.[1] (Bohler and Steinmeyer, Lucerne and New York, 1931-1933).[2] Clarence Y. Palitz [d.1958], New York, by 1939;[3] gift (partial and promised)1957 to NGA; gift completed 1958. [1] Max J. Friedländer and Jacob Rosenberg. _Die Gemälde von Lucas Cranach_. (Berlin, 1932), 53-54, nos. 123-124 (Rev. ed. _The Paintings of Lucas Cranach_. Amsterdam, 1978, 99, nos. 145-146, repro.), cites the painting as being formerly in the von Schenck collection, though this is not verified. [2] Information from a copy of the Böhler stock records in the Getty Provenance Index, Santa Monica; letter of 18 August 1988, from Martha Hepworth to Sally E. Mansfield, in curatorial files. The painting is listed as being on consignment from "Sarasota," it has not been possible to verify Hepworth's suggestion that this might refer to John Ringling. A notation in the stock records suggests that the painting passed to the dealer Paul Cassirer, but it has not been possible to confirm this. Böhler and Steinmeyer was the firm created by Julius Böhler, Munich, and Fritz Steinmeyer, Lucerne, and operated from the 1920s on; see letter of 29 August 1988, in curatorial files, from Julius Böhler to John Hand. [3] Listed as being in his collection in the Exhibition catalogue _Classics of the Nude_, New York, 1939, no. 54.
- Rights: CC0
- Medium: oil on panel
Get the app
Explore museums and play with Art Transfer, Pocket Galleries, Art Selfie, and more
You are all set!
Your first Culture Weekly will arrive this week.