by E.K.J. Reznicek

In the catalogue of the exhibition Mostra di Disegni Fiamminghi e Olandesi, held in the Uffizi printroom in Florence in 1964, I attributed drawing no. 38, The Apotheosis of Aeneas (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14:581) to Bartolomeus Spranger (fig. 1).

This large and handsome drawing, for which the artist used bistre, pen and brush, and some watercolor in gray and pink wash with white heightening, is entirely laid down, and bears an old, apocryphal inscription at bottom right: "Barthelmi Spranger".

The artist has followed Ovid faithfully; the rosy river-god Numicius, for instance, is shown with his horns, reclining at lower left. In the clouds stands Venus, making her appeal to Jupiter and the company of the gods. She appears again in the right background, this time anointing her son Aeneas, who has already been cleansed of all earthly impurities in the river, with the divine ointment of nectar and ambrosia.

This theme is fairly rare in art, and the drawing can perhaps best be compared to a painting on copper by Pietro Candido in East Berlin (fig. 3).[1]

In his Schilder-boeck of 1604 (Wtlegginghe op den Metamorphosis, fols. 115a and b), Karel van Mander gives a brief, instructive explanation of the "Apotheosis of Aeneas," and states that a pious man, like the hero, achieves immortality, and will remain in our thoughts forever.
The attribution to Spranger which I gave in 1964 was based both on the old annotation on the sheet and on a presumed affinity with his style of drawing. Fortunately, though, my note to no. 38 does echo a slight doubt: "il disegno manca del piglio veloce della penna capriciosa dello Spranger."

Others were even more dubious. Conrad Oberhuber questioned the attribution in conversation, and Wouter Kloek was also skeptical, cataloging it as anonymous while locating it, correctly, as "Haarlem [School], ca. 1585."[2]. The need for revision became apparent when Goltzius's drawing of 1585 of Mars and Venus surprised by Vulcan (Reznicek no. 105) came up for auction in Amsterdam after 30 years, changing hands for a price which conjured up images of the tulip craze of 1634.[3] Comparison of these two large drawings, the sheet in the Uffizi (560 x 430 mm) and that by Goltzius (410 x 310), which is now in the J. Paul Getty Museum (fig. 2), shows, undeniably to my mind, that the manner of execution, the manufacture or penductus, the sum of the stylistic components, is the same in both. Note the layout of the two compositions, with a "heavenly" and an "earthly" zone; note the clouds like cotton wool, upon which the gods are enacting the scene with vigor. Compare the character of the movements, notably those of Jupiter in both drawings, and the back of Vulcan holding his net in Malibu with that of the god seen from the rear seated in the clouds in the center of the Uffizi sheet, and also the wig-like appearance of the hair. It is revealing, too, to compare the way in which depth is suggested in the heavenly zone, where the foreground gods are rendered more plastically than those beyond, who are only summarily indicated with rapid, rather faint strokes of the pen.