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View of a Castle (recto); Eight-Sided Cup (verso)

Wolfgang Huber (Austrian, 1490–1553)1513

The Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland, United States

This drawing depicts a castle in southern Germany in the area around the Danube River known for its wooded and rocky heights and dramatic views. Wolfgang Huber's meandering, pen and ink lines describe the contours of the earth and the lushness of summer foliage in a horizontal layout that focuses on the middle distance with a barely recorded foreground. Huber may have made the drawing during a journey between Feldkirch and Vienna as he traveled along the Danube. In 1513 when this drawing was made, landscape was rarely depicted as a subject in and of itself, but artists in the Danube region such as Huber exhibited a profound sensitivity to nature. A drawing on the reverse of the sheet depicts a cup studded with gems and a poem written in a contemporary hand telling the mythological story of Actaeon's transformation into a stag when he intruded upon the goddess Diana and her nymphs bathing.

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  • Title: View of a Castle (recto); Eight-Sided Cup (verso)
  • Creator: Wolfgang Huber (Austrian, 1490–1553)
  • Date Created: 1513
  • Physical Dimensions: Sheet: 13.1 x 21.2 cm (5 3/16 x 8 3/8 in.)
  • Provenance: Arnold Otto Meyer, Hamburg (1825-1903), Lugt 1994 (not stamped), his sale, C. G. Boerner, Leipzig, 19-20 March 1914, no. 300, art market, 1930 (according to Halm 1930, 4), Probably Collection Prince Franz Josef II von Liechtenstein (1906-1989), Vienna (according to file; no stamp), with Kunsthandlung Walter Feilchenfeldt, Zurich
  • Type: Drawing
  • Rights: CC0
  • External Link: https://clevelandart.org/art/1951.277
  • Medium: pen and brown ink
  • Inscriptions: recto: upper center, in brown ink: 1513; lower left, in brown ink: v. h verso: by artist?, across entire sheet, in black ink: [Ov]iduss Beschribet gar schon / Von einem Cunig Akteon / Wie er aing malß wolt jagen thain / jagt hin und da jm Holtze / fand er ein Göttin Rein vnd stoltze / Diana / die padet mit jeren junkfrauen / die pegünnt er an zu schowen / Daß es sie ser verdross / sy in mit Wasser pegoss / Zw [illegible] Hirschen un wissent / daß jm sin eigen Hünt zeryssen / Daß er sich zum Hirschen verkert / von seinen Hunden zerrissen zu d[illegible] / Erd [sideways]; upper center, in red chalk: [illegible, crossed out] / adltof.
  • Fun Fact: This sheet of paper, with drawings on both sides, as well as a poem, shows how artists in the Renaissance often used one sheet of paper for various purposes.
  • Department: Drawings
  • Culture: Austria, 16th century
  • Credit Line: John L. Severance Fund
  • Collection: DR - Austrian
  • Accession Number: 1951.277
The Cleveland Museum of Art

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