The Dance of Apollo and
the Seasons to the Music of Time
"it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence
and the world are eternally justified." -- Nietzsche
After Claude Lorrain. Oil painting
on copper, 28 x 35 cm
In his will of 1663, Claude gave to his nephew Jean Gellee "a picture with its
gilt frame which represents the dance of the four seasons". This painting, as
Roethlisberger(2) writes, "is [Claude's] final and most serene solution of a
design which he elaborated in a pictorial drawing and in an etching, both dated
1662. The painting is outstanding on several accounts. Immaculately preserved,
it shows a chromatic intensity no longer found in his canvases, most of which
have darkened. It is also his last painting on copper, done not on commission,
but for himself to keep ... by February 1663 Claude was gravely ill ... Had he
indeed died at this stage, ... this painting, with its unique theme, would have
appeared all the more to represent a final declaration about his art, an urgent
and conscious summing up in extremis of a profoundly held belief. This
it is in any case, being a classically balanced, deeply poetic work, in which
all tension has been resolved in the expression of the harmonious rhythm of
nature. ... Above Chronos the flow of time is marked by the ruins, the cascade,
and the cavern, while a distant view opens up beyond the dancers, assigning an
infinite dimension to the change of the seasons."
The existence of this painting was unknown until 1987, when it surfaced at a sale
in Stockholm. Roethlisberger authenticated it in the 1987 article quoted above (and
referenced below). It was sold in New York at Sotheby's in 2004 for $433,600.
It was acquired by the Zürich Kunsthaus. A few decades later, a painting on canvas
came to light, which has added a new layer of complexity, because it shows that this
work is a later copy. The Zürich Kunsthaus still has the painting on its website but
it is labeled "Copy after Claude Lorrain", and is no longer physically on display. The
Kunsthaus website now says:
"The existence of such a painting is attested by the entry in the artist's will of 1662,
a preparatory drawing and an etching. When the present version of high quality emerged,
Marcel Roethlisberger, who wrote the critical catalogue of the artist's works (Yale
University Press, 1961) and was the leading authority on Claude Lorrain, published it in
two detailed articles (1987, 1989), which met with a positive response in the specialist
literature. Around 2020, another version appeared at a small auction. Its poor condition
no longer allows a closer judgement, but certain details reveal that while the Zürich
version gives the best idea of the painting, it is not the original."
This statment evades any discussion of the new painting. The present owner purchased
it from a German auction house; he recognized it as Claude although it was listed as
atributed to "Circle of Dughet". It seems that this new painting is not just
"another version", but is rather
rather the original by Claude. I have seen images of this new painting and I must
say that though
it has suffered, it is still a beautiful work.
References:
(1) Roethlisberger, Marcel, Claude Lorrain's "Dance of the Seasons", Pantheon,
vol. 45, p103 (1987).
(2) Roethlisberger, Marcel, The Dimension of Time in the Art of Claude Lorrain,
Artibus et Historiae, No. 20, (1989).