'Wine is Venus's Milk'

Details

Nicolaes Knüpfer (Leipzig 1609-1655 Utrecht)
'Wine is Venus's Milk'
oil on panel
19½ x 23¾ in. (49.5 x 60.3 cm.)

Provenance

(Probably) Daniel van Liebergen Paulizoon, Amsterdam, where recorded in an inventory of 1701, no. 8, 'In de zijkamer: Een Bachus en Venus van Knippert', and by bequest to
(Probably) Mechtelt van Liebergen, Amsterdam (named as beneficiary in the 1701 inventory).
(Probably) Anonymous sale [Property of Wreesman or Mensart]; Roos en Brondgeest, Amsteram, 17 August 1818, lot 33 (fl. 16.10 to Gruiter).
J. de Kuyper, Rotterdam, 1896.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 4 July 1986, lot 39.
with Müllenmeister, Solingen, 1989, from whom acquired by the present owner.

Literature

F. Schlie, Über Nicolaes Knüpfer, Schwerin, 1896, p. 18, fig. 12, as 'Vivat Bacchus'.
A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, Vienna and Leipzig, 1906-1911, I, p. 300.
H. Schneider, 'Knüpfer (Knupfer, Knufer, Knipper), Nicolaus', in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Leipzig, XXI, 1927, p. 38.
J.I. Kuznetsov, 'Nikolaus Knupfer: Biographie, thèmes et sources de la création artistique, catalogue des oeuvres', Trudy Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha - Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Ermitage, VIII, 1964, no. 97.
J.I. Kuznetzov, 'Nikolaus Knupfer (1603?-1655)', Oud Holland, LXXXVIII, 1974, p. 195, no. 97.
J. Saxton, An Original Artist: Nikolaus Knupfer (Leipzig 1605?-Utrecht 1655), doctoral dissertation, New York, 2003, no. A49.
J. Saxton, Nicolaus Knupfer: An original artist, Doornspijk, 2005, pp. 146-7, no. 52, illustrated, as 'whereabouts unknown'.

Exhibited

Richmond, Virginia, CINUA, 1983.

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Lot Essay

The subject was identified by Kuznetzov as the humerous Baccanalian parable in which the nature of love is parodied with the suggestion that Venus, here as the personification of love, is sustained by wine above all things. It was popularised in the Netherlands during the seventeenth century by Jacob Cats' Toneel, and is an irreverent quotation from Terence's The Eunuch - 'Sine Baccho et Cerere friget Venus'.
Knupfer treated the theme in two other works - a painting on copper, sold in Paris in 1995 (Drouot, 12 December 1995, lot 5), and a drawing in the Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig (see Saxton, loc. cit., nos. 51 and D22).

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