Nocturnal appearance or Night vision is a painting made by Jacob Jordaens around 1650. It is in the collection of the Staatliches Museum Schwerin (accession number G 161).[1] The title of the painting is also given as A dream. The meaning and subject of the painting depicting a nude woman seen from the back in a dark bedroom with a man asleep on a bed and two onlookers behind a half open door are still a matter of contention among art historians.[2] A second version of the painting was at the Thore (Burger) sale in Paris on 1892, then in the van Hall sale in Antwerp in 1836 and finally in 1905 it was in Paris with art dealer Franz Kleinberger who exhibited it in Antwerp.[3]
In a dark room a man is asleep in bed while on his right is a naked female figure seen from behind standing on a cloud. In front of her the woman is holding a white cloth, which she lifts up with one hand, while the other hand keeps it against her body. The sleeper in his dream or because he has woken up has upset the pedestal table near his bed, causing a candle stick and a pot (or jug) to fall to the floor. To the left a man and a woman are watching the scene with expressions of surprise. The male spectator is carrying a lit candle which casts upon his head and that of the woman a warm light, and causes the shadow of his hand to fall on the panel of the open door.[3]
Stylistically, Jordaens appears to have been influenced by Adam Elsheimer in the use of candlelight as a main light source and by Caravaggio's tenebrism.[4]
Erwin Bielefel argued that the painting most likely depicts a story written by Phlegon of Tralles for the Roman Emperor Hadrian, to which Jordaens may have had access through a translation or a contemporary adaptation. The story tells the tale of a young man, Marchete, who stays as a guest of a wealthy couple. During the night, Marchete's slumber is disturbed when he dreams of Philinion, the couple's daughter who had died a few months before. Grasping the cloth her corpse was wrapped in, Philinion, in the guise of a vampire, asks to bed with Marchete. Awoken by sounds coming from the room, Philinion's mother, Charito, comes to investigate with the aid of a maidservant. Upon entering the room, they are horrified by the sight of the deceased daughter. According to Bielefeld, Jordaens' Nocturnal appearance follows closely Phlegon's story and depicts the decisive moment or climax of the ancient tale.[5]
Julius S. Held disagreed with Bielefeld by pointing out that the painting differs in many ways from the story of Marchete and Philinion told by Phlegon. He points out that in Phlegon's story Philinion appears to Marchete while he is awake and not in his dream. Further, unlike in Phlegon's story where the spectators are a maid and the mother, the spectators in Jordaens' canvas are a man and a woman. Held suggests that the composition possibly represents the story of Alcyone and Ceyx as told by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses. Jordaens may have seen a representation of it in a print by Johann Wilhelm Baur for the 1641 illustrated edition of the Metamorphoses. In the print Morpheus, the god of dreams, appears in the shape of her dead husband Ceyx to Alcyone lying at night on her bed. She thus realises that her husband has drowned. A male and a female servant are shown entering the room, the man holding a candle. Jordaens' painting is closer to the story and imagery of this depiction of Ovid's story than to the story of Marchete and Philinion. Held also holds out the possibility that the painting does not depict a specific story but is rather a picture with an erotic intention and no specific literary source. It could be a depiction of an erotic dream about a woman.[2] A candle and pot (or jug) in proximity to each other often referred to sexual intercourse in Netherlandish paintings such as in the bride paintings of Marten van Cleve and Jan Massijs.[6] Held further refers to comments made by the painter Gerard de Lairesse who had seen the painting in the second half of the 17th century. De Lairesse recounts in his Groot Schilderboek that he and others were of the view that the painting was simply a painting of a nude model to which other elements were added solely to complete the picture.[2]
The Dream (The Corinthian Bride) at the Nationalmuseum
Dating
The painting is believed to have been painted somewhere between 1640 and 1660 and probably around 1650. It is regarded as being linked to Jordaens' Candaules Showing His Wife to Gyges, which is dated 1646.[2] The nude woman in the painting may successfully challenge the wife of Candaules by the splendour of the painting.[3]
A slighthly smaller, second version of the painting (present location unknown) was at the Thore (Burger) sale (Paris 1892) and in the van Hall sale (Antwerp, 1836). In 1905 it was in Paris with art dealer Franz Kleinberger who exhibited it in Antwerp.[3] It may be the work in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm referred to as The Dream or The Corinthian Bride and attributed to 'manner of Jacob Jordaens'. The Corinthian Bride is the title of a balad of Goethe (1797), which reworks the story of Marchete and Philinion.[7]
1 2 3 4 Julius S. Held, Jordaens' 'Night Vision': A Rejoinder, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes Vol. 25, No. 1/2 (Jan. - Jun., 1962), pp. 131-134
↑ Roger-Adolf d'Hulst,, Nora de Poorter, and M. Vandenven, Jacob Jordaens. 1593–1678, Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum Voor Schone Kunsten, 27 March – 27 June 1993, Catalogue. Gemeentekrediet, 1993, p. 83.
↑ Erwin Bielefeld, Jordaens' Night Vision, in: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 23, No. 1/2. (Jan.-Jun. 1960), pp.177–178.
↑ Meta Henneke, A fertile or a virtuous bride? Marriage ideals and marriage practices in the Peasant Weddings, in: Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen 2015-2016 = Antwerp Royal Museum Annual 2015-2016, pp. 37-74
In Greek mythology, Alcyone or Halcyone and Ceyx were a wife and husband who incurred the wrath of the god Zeus.
In Roman mythology, Somnus ("sleep") is the personification of sleep. His Greek counterpart is Hypnos. Somnus resided in the underworld. According to Virgil, Somnus was the brother of Death (Mors), and according to Ovid, Somnus had a 'thousand' sons, the Somnia, who appear in dreams 'mimicking many forms'. Ovid named three of the sons of Somnus: Morpheus, who appears in human guise, Icelos / Phobetor, who appears as beasts, and Phantasos, who appears as inanimate objects.
Jacob (Jacques) Jordaens was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and tapestry designer known for his history paintings, genre scenes and portraits. After Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, he was the leading Flemish Baroque painter of his day. Unlike those contemporaries he never travelled abroad to study Italian painting, and his career is marked by an indifference to their intellectual and courtly aspirations. In fact, except for a few short trips to locations elsewhere in the Low Countries, he remained in Antwerp his entire life. As well as being a successful painter, he was a prominent designer of tapestries.
The Book of the Duchess, also known as The Deth of Blaunche, is the earliest of Chaucer's major poems, preceded only by his short poem, "An ABC", and possibly by his translation of The Romaunt of the Rose. Based on the themes and title of the poem, most sources put the date of composition after 12 September 1368 and before 1372, with many recent studies privileging a date as early as the end of 1368.
Willem van Mieris was an 18th-century painter from the Northern Netherlands.
Thomas Cooper Gotch or T. C. Gotch (1854–1931) was an English painter and book illustrator loosely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement; he was the brother of John Alfred Gotch, the architect.
Metamorphoses is a play by the American playwright and director Mary Zimmerman, adapted from the classic Ovid poem Metamorphoses. The play premiered in 1996 as Six Myths at Northwestern University and later the Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago. The play opened off-Broadway in October 2001 at the Second Stage Theatre. It transferred to Broadway on 21 February 2002 at the Circle in the Square Theatre produced by Roy Gabay and Robyn Goodman. That year it won several Tony Awards.
The Palace on the Isle, also known as Baths Palace, is a classicist palace in Warsaw's Royal Baths Park, the city's largest park, occupying over 76 hectares of the city center.
Flemish Baroque painting refers to the art produced in the Southern Netherlands during Spanish control in the 16th and 17th centuries. The period roughly begins when the Dutch Republic was split from the Habsburg Spain regions to the south with the Spanish recapturing of Antwerp in 1585 and goes until about 1700, when Spanish Habsburg authority ended with the death of King Charles II. Antwerp, home to the prominent artists Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jacob Jordaens, was the artistic nexus, while other notable cities include Brussels and Ghent.
Jan Boeckhorst or Johann Bockhorst was a German-born Flemish Baroque painter and draughtsman. He was a versatile artist who produced history paintings, genre scenes and portraits in a style influenced by the trio of leading Baroque painters in Antwerp Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens. Boeckhorst also worked as a designer of cartoons for tapestries.
Georges Croegaert was a Belgian academic painter who spent most of his career in Paris. He is known for his genre paintings of scenes from elegant society and portraits of women. He also had a reputation for his humorous depictions of red-robed Catholic cardinals executed in a highly realist style.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens's highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens was a painter producing altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. He was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp.
The Allegory of Faith, also known as Allegory of the Catholic Faith, is a Dutch Golden Age painting by Johannes Vermeer from about 1670–1672. It has been in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since 1931.
Leendert van der Cooghen was a Dutch painter, draughtsman and printmaker. An amateur artist of independent means, he left a small oeuvre of which his drawings represent the major portion. Recognised by his fellow artists, he was admitted to the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke in 1652.
Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed, occasionally formerly known as The Imprudence of Candaules, is a 45.1 by 55.9 cm oil painting on canvas by English artist William Etty, first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1830. It shows a scene from the Histories by Herodotus, in which Candaules, king of Lydia, invites his bodyguard Gyges to hide in the couple's bedroom and watch his wife Nyssia undress, to prove to him her beauty. Nyssia notices Gyges spying and challenges him to either accept his own execution or to kill Candaules as a punishment. Gyges chooses to kill Candaules and take his place as king. The painting shows the moment at which Nyssia, still unaware that she is being watched by anyone other than her husband, removes the last of her clothes.
Candaules Showing His Wife to Gyges is a small painting of the story of Candaules painted by Jacob Jordaens around 1646. It is in the collection of the Nationalmuseum Stockholm.
Triumph of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange is a painting by the Flemish painter Jacob Jordaens, signed and dated at the bottom left "J JOR fec / 1652". It is located in the Oranjezaal in the Huis ten Bosch in The Hague, The Netherlands.
The Sibyl Agrippina is a circa 1630s oil painting of a Black woman in the guise of the Sibyl Agrippina. The painting is one of a series of Sybils by Jan van den Hoecke, only recently being re-attributed after being known as an early portrait of an African woman by Abraham Janssens. It is held in the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf.
Moses and his Ethiopian wife Zipporah, c. 1645–1650, is a painting by Jacob Jordaens, a Flemish Baroque painter. The painting is a half-length depiction of the biblical prophet Moses, and his African wife.
The Tribute Money. Peter Finding the Silver Coin in the Mouth of the Fish is a painting by Jacob Jordaens created some time between 1616 and 1634. It is in the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen. It depicts the story of Jesus sending the apostle Peter to find a silver coin in the mouth of a fish as recounted in the Gospel according to Matthew 17:24-27. The composition was referred to as the "Ferry Boat to Antwerp" by the 17th-century German art historian and painter Joachim von Sandrart who interpreted the composition as a genre scene showing the ferry boat to Antwerp setting off from the jetty.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
