Godfried Maes (Antwerp 1649 - 1700), Cadmus and Harmonia

Godfried Maes (Antwerp 1649 - 1700)

Cadmus and Harmonia

pen and brush in grey on laid paper

176 x 236 mm

Godfried Maes studied in his native Antwerp with his father and with the painter Pieter van Lint (1609-1690). He was admitted to the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp in...

Godfried Maes studied in his native Antwerp with his father and with the painter Pieter van Lint (1609-1690). He was admitted to the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp in 1672 and he spent his entire career in Antwerp, receiving commissions for altarpieces and history paintings from churches and collectors in Antwerp, Brussels and Liège. Much of his work is in a grand scale, such as a large altarpiece of The Martyrdom of Saint George, painted in 1681 for the Antwerp church of St. Joris, now in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp and the ceiling decoration of the Palais de La Tour et Taxis, Brussels. Maes also worked as a designer of tapestry cartoons, and produced book illustrations and a small number of etchings.

This well-preserved sheet is part of a series of eighty-three drawings by Maes that depict stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The group was sold by the artist’s widow (see provenance) to the Dutch artist Jacob de Wit (1695-1754). While Maes did not have the drawings engraved, Jacob de Wit did use at least ten of them as models for his own designs for illustrations, engraved under the supervision of Bernard Picart, for a 1732 publication of The Metamorphoses published in three editions in different languages, known as Picart’s Ovid. The present drawing, however, was not used for an engraving in that publication.

The sheet depicts Queen Harmonia kissing her husband Cadmus who has been changed into a snake. After a run of disasters, the couple left their city and wandered to the borders of Illyria. Ovid’s Methamorphosis descibes their methamorphosis as following: ‘Now, weighed down by age and sadness, they thought of the original destiny of their house, and in talk reviewed their sufferings. Cadmus said ‘Surely that snake, my spear pierced, must have been sacred [...]. If that is what the gods have been avenging with such sure anger, may I myself stretch out as a long-bellied snake. And, so speaking, he did extend into a long-bellied snake, and felt his skin hardening as scales grew there, while dark green patches checkered his black body.’ After her husband had been turned into a snake queen Harmonia spoke ‘Why do you not change me as well, you gods, into this same snake’s form? [...] And suddenly there were two snakes there, with intertwining coils, until they sought the shelter of the neighbouring woods. Even now they do not avoid human beings or wound them, quiet serpents, remembering what they once were.’

Provenance

Part of a series of eighty-three drawings depicting scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses with the following provenance:
The artist’s widow, Josina Baeckelandt, Antwerp, by whom sold before 1717 (for 800 florins) to;
Jacob de Wit (1695-1754), Amsterdam; de Leth, Amsterdam, 10 March 1755 (onwards), Kunstboek U (‘Waarïn de Herscheppingen van Ovidius, in Drieëntagtig uitvoerige Teekeningen, door G. Maas. Welke in één koop verkocht zullen worden.’, sold to Cronenburgh);
B. Cronenburgh, Amsterdam; de Leth, Amsterdam, 22-25 March 1762, portfolio A, lot
1 (‘Drie-en-tachentig Teekeningen uit de Ovidius, alle zeer uitvoerig met Oost-Indische Inkt geteekend door G. Maas, en een weinigje geretoucheerd door J. de Wit.’), the group broken up into smaller groups;
Possibly Graaf van Neale, Amsterdam (?)
Possibly his posthumous sale; De Winter, Amsterdam, 28 March 1774 onwards, Portfolio 1, lot 542;

Private collection, The Netherlands.

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