Venus with Cupid
Venus with Cupid
- Artist
- Girolamo di Benvenuto
- Artist Dates
- 1470-1524
- Artist Nationality
- Italian
- Title
- Venus with Cupid
- Date
- about 1500
- Medium
- tempera on panel
- Dimensions
- 52 x 51 cm (20-1/2 x 20 in)
- K Number
- K222
- Repository
- Denver Art Museum
- Accession Number
- 1961.172
- Notes
Provenance
Count della Gherardesca, Florence. (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi [1878-1955] Rome-Florence); sold to Samuel H. Kress [1863-1955] on 4 March 1932 as Matteo Balducci; gift to the National Gallery of Art in 1939; deaccessioned in 1952 and returned to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation; gift to Denver Art Museum in 1961, no. 1961.172.
Catalogue Entry
Girolamo di Benvenuto
Venus with Cupid
K222
Denver, Colo., Denver Art Museum (E-IT-18-XV-943), since 1954.(1) Wood. Polygonal, 20 1/2 X 20 in. (51.1 X 50.8 cm.). Abraded throughout. Although most critics formerly attributed this birth salver (desco da parto) to Matteo Balducci, it accords better with the style of Girolamo di Benvenuto, around 1500.(2) Parallels are offered by panels attributed to Girolamo that are of similar shape and are decorated, like K222, with mythological scenes: the Judgment of Paris, in the Louvre, for example, and Hercules Choosing between Vice and Virtue, in the Ca d'Oro, Venice. The coat of arms at the bottom of K222 has not been identified.(3) Provenance: Conte della Gherardesca, Florence. Contini Bonacossi, Florence. Kress acquisition, 1932 – exhibited: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (217), 1941-53.(4)
References
(1) Catalogue by W. E. Suida, 1954, p. 46, as Girolamo di Benvenuto. (2) Following P. Schubring (Cassoni, 1923, p. 344, pI. CXXI), R. Longhi, R. van Marle, W. E. Suida, and A. Venturi (in ms. opinions) attributed K222 to Balducci. Only F. M. Perkins and, tentatively, A. Burroughs at that time (c. 1932) attributed it to Girolamo di Benvenuto, to whom it was more recently attributed by W. E. Suida (see note 1, above). When it was in the Ghesardesca Collection, K222 was, according to Schubring (ibid.; both front and back are here reproduced) decorated on the back with a standing cupid in a circular simulated frame. In a letter of Feb. 19, 1949, R. Mather writes of having seen back and front as two separate panels before K222 entered the Kress Collection. An X-ray made by A. Burroughs soon after it entered the Kress Collection shows a circle corresponding to the inner circle of the tondo frame but no further evidence of the tondo panel. Discussing the X-rays, Burroughs indicates that there was some kind of design at this time on the reverse of the panel: 'In spite of the design on the reverse of this panel,' he says, 'the paint is well recorded in good condition.' Whatever the design, it seems to have disappeared when the panel was treated for cradling in 1933; not even the circle shows in an X-ray made in the 1950's. The present whereabouts of the cupid tondo is unknown. A seated cupid in a landscape which is very similar to the view in K222 decorates a twelve-sided desco da parto of approximately the same size in the Chigi Saracini Collection, Siena. It is reproduced by A. R. de Cervin-Albrizzi in Connaissance des Arts, Dec. 1964, p. 146, where it is attributed to Balducci. (3) In Schubring's reproduction (see note 2, above) the coat of arms is indecipherable. Mather (see note 2, above) did not believe the arms as they now appear to be genuine. (4) Preliminary Catalogue, 1941, p. 11, as Matteo Balducci.