(Siegen 1577–1640 Antwerp)
Angelica and the Hermit,
oil on panel, 45.7 x 63 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly no. 121 in Rubens’s posthumous inventory, 1640, as ‘Angelique endormie avec l’Eremite’;
James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos (1673–1744);
sale, Cock, London, 6 May 1747, lot 174;
Robert Bragge, London;
his sale, Prestage, London, 15/16 February 1750, lot 59;
James West, London;
sale, Longford and Son, 31 March – 2 April 1773, lot 61;
Kurt Walter Bachstitz, The Hague, by 1921;
Anthony Reyre, London, 1927;
O. Wargand Collection, Saarbrücken, 1930;
Actuarius, Zurich, 1931;
with Galerie Heinemann, Munich, 1938;
Private collection, Germany;
Adfintrust Holding B.V.;
Private collection, Hesse;
sale, Lempertz, Cologne, 17 November 2006, lot 1134;
Private European collection;
sale, Lempertz, Cologne, 16 May 2015, lot 1043;
where purchased by the present owner

Exhibited:
Antwerp, Rubenshuis, Rubens as Collector, 2004, no. 13

Literature:
J. M. Muller, Rubens, The Artist as Collector, Princeton 1989, p. 117;
K. L. Belkin/F. Healey, A House of Art: Rubens as Collector, exhibition catalogue, Antwerp 2004, pp. 126–28, no. 13;
N. Büttner, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard Part XII, Allegories and Subjects from Literature, Turnhout 2018, under no. 60, p. 445, (as ‘After Rubens’)

There are two documented versions of Angelica and the Hermit by Peter Paul Rubens, one of which was inventoried in the collection of the Duke of Buckingham in 1635 and a second recorded as being in the master’s Antwerp house in 1640 (no. 121 in the Specification of the artist’s possessions). Of the two autograph versions, the version in Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no. GG 692) is generally regarded as the first version, while the second version is thought to be lost.

The present panel depicts an episode from Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando Furioso, first published in 1516, and still popular in Rubens’s day. In the tale, Angelica, an oriental princess, is a guest at the court of the Emperor Charlemagne, where she toys with the hearts of many knights. An aged hermit, taken with Angelica’s beauty, bewitches her horse and has it carry her off into the sea and finally to a deserted rocky shore so that he may pose as her rescuer. Angelica, however, spurns the old sorcerer’s advances, only for him to drug her with a magic potion and attempt to ravish her while she sleeps. In both pictures, the cowled figure on the left wears a lecherous expression as he pulls away the translucent sheet covering the reclining nude. A demon hovering to the right of the comatose Angelica presumably symbolises the effects of the potion, drawing on a long tradition in Flemish painting of depicting ailments or trances with outer-body forms. Rubens would have been able to rely on his audience’s knowledge of the poem to imagine what happens next. Ariosto devotes several verses to how the warlock caresses Angelica’s body whilst being unable to perform the carnal act itself, on account of his age. The poet uses the double entendre of an old horse that is being goaded on but also held back by its rider and so unable to clear the final hurdle.

Nils Büttner suggests that the Vienna picture is the one sold by Rubens to Buckingham, presumably in 1626. In addition to the lost version documented in Rubens’s house in 1640, a third version of the composition, recorded in 1645 in the ‘Staatmasse’ pertaining to Rubens’s estate as a ‘copy’, was assigned to Rubens’s son Nicolaas: ‘no. 79. A sleeping Angelica with a Hermit’. Of those two Antwerp pictures, neither the dimensions of the master’s Angelica and the Hermit nor of the ‘copy’ bought by Nicolaas Rubens are given. The present lot could be a candidate for either. Fiona Healy, in her 2004 exhibition catalogue, speculates about the present lot that ‘the exhibited painting might even be the copy that is cited in the ‘Nalatenschap’ as bought from the estate by Nicolaas Rubens for 15 guilders’.

The composition further explores the motif of the unveiling of a sleeping nude, who, as with many of Rubens’s figures, is after antique statuary. Rubens first examined this configuration in Diana and her Nymphs spied upon by Satyrs, circa 1616, conserved in the Royal Collection, London, inv. no. RCIN 405553 and engraved by by Richard Earlom (see fig. 1). Büttner suggests that Rubens may have been influenced by the figures of a famous marble fountain that was installed in the Cortile di Belvedere in the artist’s lifetime.

In the Duke of Buckingham’s London residence of York House (of which only the ornate watergate survives) the painting, in spite of its lewd subject, is documented as hanging ‘in the passage by the ladies’ closet’. Within Rubens’s own collection (fig. 2), the two versions of Angelica and the Hermit shared the house with a further erotically charged work by his most talented pupil, listed in the Specification as ‘A naked Venus with a Satyre, by van dykke’. In 1630, the widowed Rubens, at the age of 54, married Helena Fourment, the 16-year-old niece of his first wife. Paintings were talking points, and perhaps such a picture depicting the episode from Ariosto’s poem was a source of ribaldry in the master’s household.

In the Vienna version, Angelica’s flesh and the braiding of the red cloth are loosely executed and richly impastoed – the overall impression being one of the first conception. In the present painting, Angelica’s flesh is smooth and translucent, which, while differing from the Vienna handling, is no less typical of Rubens’s characteristic method of painting flesh. Ariosto describes how the hermit kisses Angelica’s breasts and mouth: ‘Or le bacia, il bel petto, ora la bocca’. Rubens plays out the dramatic contrast between the hermit and Angelica in the Vienna picture by rendering the reclining female nude in warm tones whilst using ruddier pigments for the aged face and hands of the hermit – a juxtaposition also apparent in the present lot.

The artist in the present panel has scratched out highlights in Angelica’s hair using the back of his brush – a technique Rubens is known to have employed periodically. Furthermore, the demon hovering at the upper right of the present painting represents a development from the more mask-like creature of the Vienna version, and is a more living, breathing creature, notably in the head and claw-like hand. The spontaneity and translucency in the handling of the paint is such that H. G. Evers gave the present painting to Rubens. His certificate of 12 July 1971 is affixed to the verso.

The present panel’s composite construction, made from wood re-used from or intended for furniture, apparent from the dowelling grooves cut into the members, is typical of the economies made by Rubens, especially in the works he executed for his own collection. As court painter he was exempted from the Antwerp guild regulations governing panel manufacture. Dendrochronological examination by Peter Klein suggests a creation date of 1626.