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拍品专文
Willem van Mieris was the son of the celebrated Leiden fijnschilder (fine painter) Frans van Mieris. During his lifetime, Willem enjoyed significant success and he sat several times on the board of the Guild of Saint Luke. His paintings were highly sought after in large part for their jewel-like execution. His refined pictorial style is manifest here in the highly-detailed still-life of shells strewn around Andromeda’s bare feet.
The subject of this painting is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses (IV, 669ss). According to the poet, the Aethiopean queen, Cassiopeia, boasted that her daughter, Andromeda, was more beautiful than Neptune’s Nereids. As punishment, the god of the sea sent a monstrous creature to devastate the coast of their Aethiopean kingdom. Under the guidance of the Oracle of Apollo and in an attempt to put an end to the monster’s rampage, King Cepheus ordered that Andromeda be chained to a rock by the coast, stripped naked and left to die. There, Perseus happened upon her and fell instantly in love. He vanquished the monster and won Andromeda’s hand in marriage.
This composition is comparable to Willem van Mieris’ rendering of the same subject (in reverse) in gouache on vellum dated 1691 (fig. 1; Antwerp, Galerie Lowet de Wotrenge; A.J. Elen, ‘Ongemeen uitvoerig op Perkament met sapsverven behandeld. De gekleurde tekeningen van Willem van Mieris uit de collective Jonas Wisen’, Delineavit et Sculpsit, XV, May 1995, pp. 1-22, no. 10, illustrated). With her arm lifted in despair, the nude figure of Andromeda is also reminiscent of the artist’s depiction of Susanna in two paintings dated 1714 and 1731 (Brussels, Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire; and Perpignan, Musée d'art Hyacinthe Rigaud, on loan from the Louvre, Paris).
The subject of this painting is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses (IV, 669ss). According to the poet, the Aethiopean queen, Cassiopeia, boasted that her daughter, Andromeda, was more beautiful than Neptune’s Nereids. As punishment, the god of the sea sent a monstrous creature to devastate the coast of their Aethiopean kingdom. Under the guidance of the Oracle of Apollo and in an attempt to put an end to the monster’s rampage, King Cepheus ordered that Andromeda be chained to a rock by the coast, stripped naked and left to die. There, Perseus happened upon her and fell instantly in love. He vanquished the monster and won Andromeda’s hand in marriage.
This composition is comparable to Willem van Mieris’ rendering of the same subject (in reverse) in gouache on vellum dated 1691 (fig. 1; Antwerp, Galerie Lowet de Wotrenge; A.J. Elen, ‘Ongemeen uitvoerig op Perkament met sapsverven behandeld. De gekleurde tekeningen van Willem van Mieris uit de collective Jonas Wisen’, Delineavit et Sculpsit, XV, May 1995, pp. 1-22, no. 10, illustrated). With her arm lifted in despair, the nude figure of Andromeda is also reminiscent of the artist’s depiction of Susanna in two paintings dated 1714 and 1731 (Brussels, Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire; and Perpignan, Musée d'art Hyacinthe Rigaud, on loan from the Louvre, Paris).