Description
THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR
A PORTRAIT OF JOHANNES CUSPINIAN, WITH HIS SECOND WIFE AGNES, AND HIS SONS FROM HIS FIRST MARRIAGE: SEBASTIAN FELIX AND NICOLAUS CHRISTOSTOMUS
A PORTRAIT OF JOHANNES CUSPINIAN, WITH HIS SECOND WIFE AGNES, AND HIS SONS FROM HIS FIRST MARRIAGE: SEBASTIAN FELIX AND NICOLAUS CHRISTOSTOMUS
measurements note
71 by 62 cm.; 28 by 24 1/2 in.
inscribed in latin: on a painted tablet upper centre: FILII COLITE DEVM/ DISCITE PRVDENCIA/ DILIGITE HONESTATE (Sons, respect(?) God/ Learn prudence/Esteem honesty)
inscribed above the head of Cuspinian: ZEBEDEVS
inscribed above the head of his wife: SALOME VXOR.I.PACIFICA/ QVAI FILIOS PAC S GENVIT.
inscribed above the head of his eldest son: JACOBVS MAIOR/ CHRISTO.COEVVS
Inscribed on the parapet to the right of the younger son: IONNES... E/ CHRIS...A
Inscribed at length on the reverse (see below)
oil on softwood panel
PROVENANCE
Solly collection, Berlin;
Until 1913 in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, Berlin;
Graf Wilczek, Burg Kreuzenstein, Lower Austria, from 1913;
Thence by descent, subsequently at Schloß Seebarn, Lower Austria, until after 1964;
Bought by the present owner in 1989.
LITERATURE
W. von Bode, "Bernhard Strigel, der sog. Meister der Sammlung Hirscher", in Jahrbuch der Preu~ischen Kunstsammlungen, II, 1881, p. 54 ff. (where the inscription on the reverse is given);
L. Scheibler, "Verzeichnis der Werke Bernhard Strigels", in Jahrbuch der Preu~ischen Kunstsammlungen, vol. II, 1881, p. 59;
L. Balda~, "Die Bildnisse Kaiser Maximilians", in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen der Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, vol. 31, Vienna 1913, p. 273;
H. Ankwicz, "Bernhard Strigel in Wien", in Kunst und Kunsthandwerk, 1916, p. 306 ff.;
F.X. Weizinger, "Die Malerfamilie der Strigel in der ehemals freien Reichsstadt Memmingen", in Festschrift des Münchener Altertumsvereins, Munich 1914, p. 144;
B. Lázár, "Bernhard Strigels Wladislausbildnis", in Studien zur Kunstgeschichte, Vienna 1917, p. 53 ff.;
A.L. Mayer, "Bernhard Strigel als Porträtmaler", in Pantheon, vol. III, 1929, p. 9;
'Baum.' in F. Thieme & U. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, vol. 32, Leipzig 1938, p. 188;
A Stange, Deutsche Malerei der Gotik, vol. VIII, Munich-Berlin 1957, 8, p. 148;
H. Ankwicz, Der Wiener Humanist Johannes Cuspinian, 1959, p. 190 ff.;
G. Otto, Bernhard Strigel, Munich-Berlin, 1964, pp. 74-5, 104-5, no. 77, reproduced fig. 144;
M.J. Friedländer & J. Rosenberg, The Paintings of Lucas Cranach, London 1978, p. 67, under nos 6-7;
E. Rettich, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, London 1996, vol. 29, p. 773.
NOTE
The inscription on the reverse incorporates Strigel's signature and the date October 1520, and names the sitters. It was first transcribed by Von Bode. Since then it has been restored, and now reads as follows (note the third line now starts with the word REGIONIS, but the original may have read LEGIONIS, as Von Bode thought):
ANNO HVMANAE REPARACIONIS MDXX: MENSE OCTOBRI
LEONE X. PONT. MAX. QVVM CAROLVS V. PHILIPPI CASTELLAE
R[L]EGIONIS AC GRANATAE REGIS FILIVS AQVISGRANI I REGE
RO CREARETVR AC RO. CAESAR DESIGNARETVR BERNARDI-
NVS STRIGIL. PICTOR. CIVIS MEMINGEN.NOBILIS.QVI SOLVS
EDICTO CAESARE MAXIMILIANV. VT OLIM APELLES ALEXAN-
DRVM PINGERE IVSSVS HAS IMAGINES MANV SINISTRA PER
SPECVLA FERME SEXAGENARIVS VIENNAE PINGEBAT
Johannes Cuspinianus doctor francus ex schweinfurt olim caes.
Aug. Maximiliani imp. a consilius et ad reges Hungariae Boemiae
ac Poloniae. Vladislau Ludovicu et Sigismundu orator Caroliq
V. Caes. Consiliarius ac locu tenens in senatu Vienen. que Vulg
Anwaldu apellat. Ex prima coniuge Anna octo liberos genu[it]
e quibus hic Sebastianus Foelix annu agebat etatis quintudecimu
minor natu Nicolaus Chrisostomus duodecimu: genitor horu
duodequinquagesimu Hagnes nouerca quadragesimuprim[u].
[PR]IMA TABVLA HABET IMAGINES MAXIMILIANI CAES AVG.
[M]ARIAE DVCISSAE BVRGVNDIAE FILIAE DVCIS PHIL.
[F]ILII REGNIS CASTELLAE CAROLI. V. IMP. AVG. FERDINAN. [IN]
[F]ANTIS HISP. ARCHIDVCVM AC NEPOTVM CAES. ET LVDOVI[CI]
[REG]IS HVNGARIAE AC BOHEMIAE
In the year of human reparation (i.e. salvation) 1520 in the month of October when Leo X was Pope, while Charles V, son of Philip, king of Castille, Leon and Granada, was being created King of the Romans at Aachen and being designated Caesar, Bernhard Strigel, painter, citizen of Memmingen, noble, who alone having been ordered by edict to paint Caesar Maximilian, as once Apelles [painted] Alexander with his left hand, through a looking-glass, at nearly sixty years old he painted these likenesses at Vienna.
Johannes Cuspinian, a free doctor from Schweinfurt, [was?] at one time by counsel to Caesar Augustus Maximilian the Emperor and to the kings of Hungary, Bohemia and Poland, Vladislaw[,] Ludovicus and Sigismund and orator to Charles V, his counsellor and representative in the Viennese senate, which is called Anwald in the local tongue. With his first wife Anna he brought forth eight children and of these this Sebastian Felix was fifteen years old, younger by birth Nicolaus Chrisostomus twelve years old, their father forty-eight, their stepmother Agnes forty-one.
The first panel has likenesses of Maximilian Caesar Augustus, of Mary the duchess of Burgundy, daughter of Duke Charles, of their son Philip of the kingdom of Castille, Charles V Emperor Augustus, Ferdinand the Infante of Spain, of archdukes and nephews of the Emperor and Ludovicus king of Hungary and Bohemia.
Although he lived in Memmingen in Swabia all his life, Strigel was often in the service of the Imperial court, and he travelled to Vienna in 1515, summoned by the Emperor Maximilian to paint the Imperial family. He made a second visit in 1520, when he painted the present portrait group. The inscription on the reverse gives us a great deal of information about the painter as well as his sitters, including his age of almost sixty, that he was a citizen of Memmingen, that he was left handed and used a looking or magnifyning glass, that he was ennobled and that he was the only painter commanded to paint the Emperor Maximilian I, and was his Court Painter.
As the inscription on the reverse states, this portrait was painted by Strigel in Vienna in October 1520. It portrays the Viennese humanist Dr. Johannes Cuspinianus at the age of 48, with his second wife Agnes, aged 41, and his sons by his first marriage, Sebastian Felix, aged fifteen, and Nikolaus Chrysostomus, aged twelve (they had eight children in all). Cuspinian's real name was Spiessheimer, and as the inscription on the reverse states, he came from Schweinfurt in Franconia, where he was born in 1473. He was an historian at the University of Vienna, where he was appointed Rector in 1500, and Professor in 1508. Cuspinian also received the position of chief librarian of the Imperial Library, and was superintendent of the archives of the imperial family. As curator of the university he exercised great influence on its development, although he was not able to prevent the decline caused by the political and religious disturbances of the second decade of the sixteenth century. He was on terms of friendship with the most noted humanists and scholars; the calling of his friend Celtes to Vienna is especially due to him. Celtes and he were the leading spirits of the literary association called the Sodalitas Litterarum Danubiana. He undertook diplomatic work for Maximilian I, including arranging a settlement between the Habsburg line and the Kings of Hungary and Bohemia, (an event referred to in the inscription on the reverse of the present panel). In 1515 Maximilian appointed him as his chief councillor, and he was made Prefect of Vienna in the same year. He was later advisor to Maximilian's successor, Charles V. Of his publications, the best-known is his History of the Roman Emperors, prepared during the years 1512-22, and which probably influenced Maximilian, and strengthened the connections between them. For a long time, especially after the battle of Mohács, he busied himself with the Turkish question and printed both political and historical writings on the subject, the most important of which is his De Turcarum origine, religione et tyrannide. He died in 1529, one year after Strigel.
After the death of his first wife, Anna, Cuspinian married in 1514 Agnes, daughter of Bürgermeister Stainer of Wiener Neustadt, who was probably a widow. The commission to paint Cuspinian and his family may have come through the sitter's close connections at Court, but as Otto (see Literature) noted, his second wife Agnes had connections with Memmingen. Her sister Margaretha was married to the Memmingen nobleman Alexius Funk, who also served as Bürgermeister at Wiener Neustadt, but who is buried in the Martinskirche at Memmingen (Strigel had earlier painted the Epitaph for Funk's kinsman Hans Funk the Younger, now at Schaffhausen).
Cuspinianus and his first wife Anna had eighteen years earlier been portrayed by Lucas Cranach the Elder in pendant portraits, probably painted to celebrate their marriage in 1502. They may well be Cranach's earliest surviving portraits, done early in his sojourn in Vienna, and were originally conceived as the two constituent parts of a diptych, since the horizon of the landscape background is contiguous (they are in Winterthur, Sammlung Oskar Reinhart; see Friedländer, under Literature, reproduced figs 6 & 7).
In its format and iconography, the present portrait is a conscious repitition of Strigel's Portrait of the Emperor Maximilian I and his Family (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), painted five years earlier. The connection is specified in the inscription on the reverse, where the Vienna portrait is described as ('PRIMA TABVLA..'). Both are on panels of similar size, and in both, the inscriptions on the front, painted in the same script above the heads of the sitters, evoke the names of members of the Holy Kinship, the family of Our Lord. The Vienna portrait group was formerly, and originally, the left wing of a diptych, with a Holy Kinship (now separated from it) forming the right wing, and the present painting was almost certainly also paired as a diptych with a Holy Kinship. For Cuspinianus to have commissioned his own family portrait as part of such a diptych in imitation of the Imperial one might have led to charges of lèse majesté. The circumstances of Strigel's visit to Vienna in 1520 are not known, but they must have been closely connected with the aftermath of Maximilian's death in 1519. His successor Charles V was elected Emperor on 28th June 1520, and the inscription on the reverse of this panel places this event in the past tense. We do not know if Strigel was summoned to Vienna by Charles V, or whether he felt it necessary to be there, as the previous Emperor's court painter, to establish his credentials with the new regime. If so, it may have been Cuspinian who brought him there, and his invitation aranged via Cuspinian's brother-in-law, Strigel's fellow Memminger Alexius Funk. Both Strigel and Cuspinian would have had strong grounds for wishing to re-establish their credentials with the new regime, and Strigel's portrait of Cuspinian and his family, painted this way and with the telling inscription on the reverse, shows him as a man to be highly regarded by Emperors and as one enjoying Imperial favour, and Strigel in a similar light, and as their natural choice as portraitist. In this last regard, Strigel seems to have been unsuccessful, since no portraits by him of Charles V or of his family are known.
In all these important respects, the present picture and the Vienna Maximilian portrait group are unique in Strigel's ~uvre: most of his other portraits, including all those made for the Habsburg Court, are of single sitters. Absent from the Vienna Maximilian portrait however, is any equivalent to the tablet in the present work bearing an exhortation to Cuspinian's sons to fear God, be prudent and honest.
