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).