Lucas Cranach The Elder (Kronach 1472-1553 Weimar)
- Bacchus at the Wine Vat

Bacchus at the Wine Vat

(Set Currency)

$2,500,000 - $3,500,000

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Sale 2282
Old Master & 19th Century Paintings, Drawings, & Watercolors
27 January 2010
New York, Rockefeller Plaza

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Lucas Cranach The Elder (Kronach 1472-1553 Weimar)
Bacchus at the Wine Vat
signed with artist's device of a dragon with wings spread and dated '1530' (on the tub, lower right)
oil on panel
23¼ x 15½ in. (59 x 39.4 cm.)

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THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR

Prince Alexis Orloff, Paris; Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 29 April 1920, lot 18 (21,000 francs to Seligmann).
with Goudstikker, Amsterdam, 1927.
August Berg, Portland, Oregon, by 1928.
William Berg, Sausalito, California.
Dr. Alejandro Pietri, Caracas, by 1950.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 24 November 1967, lot 12 (15,000 gns to Shaw).
with Acquavella Galleries, New York, by 1970.
with Thomas Gibson Fine Art, London, by 1979.
with Jeffrey H. Loria & Co., New York, by June 1982, when acquired by
Saul P. Steinberg; Sotheby's, New York, 10 January 1991, lot 32.
with Richard L. Feigen & Co., New York, from where purchased by the present owner on 15 May 2000.

R.A. Parker, 'The Revaulation of Lucas Cranach', International Studio, LXXVI, 1927, p. 18.
M.J. Friedländer and J. Rosenberg, Die Gemälde von Lucas Cranach, Berlin, 1932, p. 69, no. 212, pl. 212.
C.L. Kuhn, A Catalogue of German Paintings of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in American Collections, Cambridge, 1936, p. 39, no. 102. L. Goldscheider, 'Michelangelo Studies II: Virtus et Voluptas', Connoisseur, CXXXIII, 1954, p. 147-149, fig. iv.
C.G. Stridbeck, Bruegelstudien, Stockholm, 1956, p. 186.
D. Koepplin and T. Falk, Lukas Cranach, exhibition catalogue, Basel, 1974, I, p. 299, fig. 18; II, pp. 602-603, no. 505.
W. Schade, Die Malerfamilie Cranach, Dresden, 1974, p. 463,
no. 184, pl. 184.
The Burlington Magazine, CXIX, no. 897, December 1977, appendix
pl. V.
M.J. Friedländer and J. Rosenberg, The Paintings of Lucas Cranach, Ithaca, 1978, p. 121, no. 260, pl. 260.

New York, F. Kleinberger and Co., German Primitives, November 1928, no. 26.
Indianapolis, John Herron Art Museum, Holbein and His Contemporaries, 22 October-24 December 1950, no. 17.
Basel, Kunstmuseum, Lukas Cranach, 15 June-8 September 1974,
no. 505.

The present work is unique in Cranach's oeuvre since, unusually for an artist whose output was seemingly geared to multiplicity, it was not repeated by himself or his studio. Bacchus, the god of wine (and fertility) whose rites were often accompanied by frenzied orgies, was a popular subject in the art of the Italian Renaissance, inspired no doubt by antique Roman prototypes. To the humanists of the Renaissance, Bacchus's passionate spirit stood in direct contrast to the rational and civilized side of man's nature, as exemplified by Apollo. In sculpture and in painting, artists such as Mantegna, Donatello, Michelangelo and Piero di Cosimo all approached the subject as a means to show the humorous effects of alcohol on man.

Cranach's depiction of the subject, however, is both singular and complex. Seated at the left of the composition is Bacchus, who in classical iconography is depicted as a handsome youth. Here he appears to have been fused with Silenus, a fat, drunken, old man who was a member of Bacchus's retinue. However, the facial features of Bacchus appear to be individual and it therefore seems likely that is it is an actual portrait, perhaps of a patron, friend or some then-recognizable public figure. The artist must have been aware of Hans Baldung Grien's woodcut of 1520, Drunken Bacchus Surrounded by Children at a Wine Vat (fig. 1). A further source may have been Hans Schlegel's carved relief of Bacchus Among the Children on the portal of Mansfeld Castle which Cranach had visited and included in the background of his hunt scene of 1529. Cranach's composition, however, takes the antics of the inebriated putti a stage further as they engage in fighting, imbibe wine and generally show the physical effects of drink. The artist also introduces into the scene a recumbent young female nude in the foreground and an ugly old woman who appears to enable and encourage the behavior of the children. It is unclear what the precise relevance or role of these figures is, but together they evoke the theme of the Ages of Man.

The present work is also notable for being an extremely rare and early image of wine making. The wine in the vat appears to be undergoing a type of open fermentation and given the German origins of the work, it is likely to be a type of Riesling. The earliest reference to Riesling dates from 13 March 1435, when the storage inventory of the high noble Count John IV of Katzenelnbogen in Rüsselsheim (a small principality on the Rhine, close to today's Rheingau) lists '22 umb seczreben Rielingen in die wingarten' ('22 shillings for Riesling vine cuttings for the vineyard').

The present work was almost certainly intended to have a double meaning. It is an amusing image of the effects of alcohol, of course, but it also suggests a moralizing message. Cranach was cognoscent of contemporary humanist trends and fully aware of the related literature that had wide currency at the time. A Latin handbook published in 1511 for the students of Wittenburg University warned through images and text against the effects of drink and chastised those who became drunk in the service of Bacchus, advising instead a life of virtue and study. Similarly, this painting, while meant to be enjoyed as a visual rendering of the excesses of human behavior, would have also been understood by a contemporary audience as transmitting a strong warning against immorality.

We are grateful to Dr. Dieter Koepplin for confirming the attribution to Lucas Cranach the Elder on the basis of photographs (written communication, 26 October 2009).

Old Master and 19th Century Art

• Cranach, Lucas the Elder (1472-1553)

• Cranach, Lucas the Elder (1472-1553)
• 16th Century
• Paintings
• oil
• Germany
• Old Master
• religious

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