View of a Castle (recto); Eight-Sided Cup (verso)

1513

Wolfgang Huber

Wolfgang Huber (Austrian, 1490–1553)

Drawings

View of a Castle (recto); Eight-Sided Cup (verso), 1513. Wolfgang Huber (Austrian, 1490–1553). Pen and brown ink; sheet: 13.1 x 21.2 cm (5 3/16 x 8 3/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund 1951.277 This drawing depicts a castle in Southern Germany in the area around the Danube River known for its wooded and rocky heights and dramatic views. Wolfgang Huber's meandering, pen and ink lines describe the contours of the earth and the lushness of summer foliage in a horizontal layout that focuses on the middle distance with a barely recorded foreground. Huber may have made the drawing during a journey between Feldkirch and Vienna as he traveled along the Danube. In 1513 when this drawing was made, landscape was rarely depicted as a subject in and of itself, but artists in the Danube region such as Huber exhibited a profound sensitivity to nature. A drawing on the reverse of the sheet depicts a cup studded with gems and a poem written in a contemporary hand telling the mythological story of Actaeon's transformation into a stag when he intruded upon the goddess Diana and her nymphs bathing. This sheet of paper, with drawings on both sides, as well as a poem, shows how artists in the Renaissance rarely wasted paper.

Original Source

Maker/Artist: Huber, Wolfgang
Classification: Drawing
Formatted Medium: pen and brown ink
Medium: pen, brown, ink
Dimensions: Sheet: 13.1 x 21.2 cm (5 3/16 x 8 3/8 in.)
Inscribed: Inscription: recto: upper center, in brown ink: 1513; lower left, in brown ink: v. h verso: by artist?, across entire sheet, in black ink: [Ov]iduss Beschribet gar schon / Von einem Cunig Akteon / Wie er aing malß wolt jagen thain / jagt hin und da jm Holtze / fand er ein Göttin Rein vnd stoltze / Diana / die padet mit jeren junkfrauen / die pegünnt er an zu schowen / Daß es sie ser verdross / sy in mit Wasser pegoss / Zw [illegible] Hirschen un wissent / daß jm sin eigen Hünt zeryssen / Daß er sich zum Hirschen verkert / von seinen Hunden zerrissen zu d[illegible] / Erd [sideways]; upper center, in red chalk: [illegible, crossed out] / adltof.
Departments: Drawings
Accession Number: 1951.277
Credit Line: John L. Severance Fund
Exhibitions: Department of Prints and Drawings Opening Exhibition, Drawings from the Museum Collection: 15th-17th Centuries, Drawings, Old Master Drawings, Prints and Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art Collection, Old Master Prints and Drawings, Drawings from the Museum Collection, Prints and Drawings of the Danube School, Northern European Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art, The German Tradition
Rights Statement: CC0