XV - Works On Paper - Marty de Cambiaire (English)

Vatican Meleager. The god is seen to hold a wand
instead of the purse and is wearing a mantle over
his shoulders which discreetly covers the lower part
of his body. It is also possible that Rubens drew
inspiration from a Goltzius’s print after Polidoro
da Caravaggio 5 . Concevably, Rubens might have
executed preparatory drawings for the sculpture of
Mercury too, although no such works are known.
Another sheet by Jordaens in the Fogg Art Museum
in Cambridge, MA 6 , of similar dimensions and
technique as the present drawing, shows Mercury
seen frontally, in a very similar pose to the figure
in the present sheet (Fig. 2). A further drawing in
Copenhagen, also shows Mercury frontally, with a
rooster at his feet, the wand in his right hand placed
behind the hip. Originally considered to be by
Georg Petel, it has now been attributed to Rubens’s
workshop after being for a long time attributed to
Georg Petel 7 .
Fig 2 J. Jordaens, Mercury, Boston, Fogg Art Museum.
death in 1640 “Un Mercure aussi faict d’yvoire,
de l’invention de feu Mons. Rubens” 1 , now in the
Hermitage in St. Petersburg (Fig. 1) along with its
pendant, the Venus at her Bath, also naked and
designed by Rubens. Both statuettes of about 55
cm had been ascribed to Georg Petel before Alfred
Shadler proposed an attribution to the Antwerp
sculptor Artus Quellinus the Elder (1609-1668) and
suggested a dating before his Italian sojourn between
1635 and 1639. 2 His bas-relief of Mercury in the
Royal Palace of Amsterdam, although executed later
in around 1650, has similarities with the figure in
the present sheet: its pose is also inspired by ancient
sculpture and it has the same detail of the long
elegant fingers placed around the object in his
hand. However, the name of his teacher, François
Duquesnoy (1597-1643), well known for his smallsize
works in ivory, wax and bronze, has also been
mentioned 3 .
Whoever the sculptor of the statuettes may have
been, they are Rubens’s invention according to
the description in the inventory of the collection.
He must have executed drawings or preparatory
sketches which probably influenced Jordaens as
much as the sculpture itself 4 . In effect, a drawing of
a “Venus Seen from behind” in the Louvre (RF2028),
showing a somewhat more robust woman, is a
preparatory study for the Venus. Furthermore, a
painting by Rubens in the Prado (Inv. 1658), shows
the figure of Mercury standing in a frontal position,
in contrapposto, in a pose borrowed from the
The Fogg Art Museum sheet and the sculpture in the
Hermitage are less chaste than Rubens’s painting:
the mantle, which covers the god’s shoulders, but
unveils the lower part of the body, accentuates
his nudity. In both drawings, Jordaen’s highly
characteristic use of red chalk hatching, black
chalk and brown wash, confers a definite carnal
aspect to the figure of Mercury. In fact, the highly
realistic lights effects achieved on the body suggest
that the present sheet might have been drawn after
a live model.
Is this merely a drawing after the sculpture? Or
is it possible that the reception of the sculpture
led to a succession of copies and imitations in
the workshop and in Rubens’s entourage, thus
creating a challenge between sculpture and
draughtsmanship to show their ability to render
flesh and allow all sorts of interpretations and
digressions, whether with or without the use of a
live model? In fact, the hypothesis of a collective
exercise seems to be supported by the presence of
the rooster at Mercury’s feet in the Copenhagen
drawing: in order to insert it in the composition the
draughtsman had to stretch the base of the statuette
on the left and the wand, placed rather artificially
in the elbow of the god’s folded arm seems to
have been added as an alternative idea. Lastly, the
figure of Mercury seen from behind, recurs in a
very similar pose in the painting of Mercury and
Argus executed by Jordaens’s workshop, which
shows that the works inspired by the sculpture and
executed by artists in Rubens’s circle was repeated
in Jordaens’s workshop 8 .
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Actual size detail