Description:
A young girl in the elaborate costume of the day, is seated beneath a tree, her lover to the right plays a guitar. A cupid in the tree above is shooting an arrow at them.
"Humanas recreo mentes, volucresque ferasque | Omnia floriferi laetantur tempore veris" ("I refresh the human spirit, as I do the birds and the wild beasts: hapiness is everywhere in the time of flower-bearing spring"). Latin text by Cornelis Schonaeus, the headmaster of the Haarlem Latin School.
Label Text:
Saenredam engraved these prints after designs by his teacher, Hendrik Goltzius. It was Goltzius’ third effort to tackle the popular subject, merging classical iconography with genre style depictions of seasonal activities of people in ordinary surroundings. Spring features a fashionably dressed young couple, completely absorbed in each other’s amorous stare as a cupid hovers in the lush canopy above. In Summer, the god Apollo embodies the transit of the sun and the daily labors of the season. Goltzius inserts Bacchus into his produce-laden autumn market scene. The virtuoso rendering of the fourth composition demonstrates the breadth of Goltzius’ repurposing of concepts from earlier masters. For wintertime, typically associated with feasting and revelry, the artist inserts three personifications: Winter as Aeolus, the god of winds; Comus, the Greek god of festivity; and again Bacchus, the Roman god of agriculture. The Latin text summarizes the eclectic visuals: "All that you see gathered throughout the year provides us with rich fare in the season of icy cold.”
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+1971.3 |
