Jan van Noordt
Granida and Daifilo
Oil on canvas, mounted on panel (parquetted). 136.5 x 116 cm.
Signed and dated centre left: Joan v. Noordt. f. 1663.
The present painting shows a scene from the play "Granida" written in 1605 by Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft, which was very popular as a model for Dutch painting in the 17th century. Depictions of this subject were created by Dirck van Baburen, Govert Flinck and Gerard van Honthorst, among others. This scene from Act 1 shows the first encounter of the Persian princess Granida with the shepherd Daifilo and his lover Dorilea. Daifilo offers the thirsty princess water in a mussel shell and falls in love with her. After the usual baroque entanglements and intrigues, the two finally become a couple.
Jan van Noordt was probably inspired to this theme by his teacher Jacob Backer, who created several versions of this subject. Van Noordt had also taken up the theme 18 years earlier, at the beginning of his artistic career, in a painting that is now in the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney (cf. de Witt, op. cit., p. 150, no. 33). Our present, later version of the subject shows a much lighter colouring in comparison, whereby in particular the extremely graceful figure of Granida in her elegant, silvery silk robe and the light skin contrasts effectively with the shepherd couple rendered in earthier tones.
This work, which has been widely published and was exhibited in Berlin in 1914, can be traced back to 1772, when it came up for sale in an auction in Leiden as lot 1.
Provenance
Auctioned by "Jonkvrouw M.J. Cosson et al.", Leiden, 21.10.1772, lot 1. - Acquired there by v. Leyden. - Auctioned by "Deux Amateurs", Leiden, 26.8.1788, lot 107. - Acquired there by H. Hoogstraten. - Prince Tatarsky (Prince Serge Koudacheff?), St. Petersburg. - Auctioned in "Tableaux anciens formant la collection du Prince Tatarsky", Frederik Muller & Cie., Amsterdam, 27.6.1905, lot 22 (with ill.). - Ida von Schubert, née Freiin von Stumm, Berlin (according to exhibition cat. Berlin 1914). - Auctioned by Phillips, London, 7.7.1998, lot 78 - Auctioned by Sotheby's, London, 18.4.2002, lot 34 - Auctioned by Bonham's, London, 25.4.2018, lot 185 - Private collection, Southern Germany.
Literature
Cornelis Hofstede de Groot: Joan van Noordt, in: Oud Holland 10, 1892, pp. 210-8, p. 215, no. 10 - Joseph Otto Kronig: Een onbekende Joan van Noordt in het museum van Brussel, in: Onze Kunst 10, 1911, pp. 156-8, p. 157 (with ill.). - Exhib. cat. "Ausstellung von Werken alter Kunst aus dem Privatbesitz von Mitgliedern des Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums-Vereins", Berlin, Königliche Akademie der Künste, May 1914, p. 32, no. 112. - Kurt Bauch: Jakob Adriaensz Backer: Ein Rembrandtschüler aus Friesland (= Grotesche Sammlung von Monographien zur Kunstgeschichte 5), Berlin 1926, p. 68, note 12. - Wolfgang Stechow: Review of Illa Budde: Die Idylle im Holländischen Barock, Cologne 1929, in: Kritische Berichte zur Kunstgeschichtlichen Literatur 2, 1928-29, pp. 181-7, p. 185. - Jean Decoen: Jean van Noordt, in: Cahiers de Belgique 4, 1931, pp. 9-19, p. 18. - Sturla J. Gudlaugsson: Representations of Granida in Dutch Seventeenth-century Painting I, in: The Burlington Magazine 91, 1949, pp. 39-43, p. 38 (with illustration). - Werner Sumowski: Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, vol. 1, Landau 1983, p. 140, p. 143, note 71, ill. p. 177. - Marleen A. H. Te Poel: De Granida en Daifilo-voorstellingen in de Nederlandse Schilderskunst van de 17de eeuw, Diss. Utrecht 1986, pp. 32, 61, no. 28, ill. p. 94. - Werner Sumowski: Paintings by Jan van Noordt, in: The Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury 3, 1986, pp. 21-37, pp. 27, 32 (ill. 11). - Johan H. Giskes: Jacobus van Noordt (ca. 1616-1680). Organist van Amsterdam, in: Jaarboek Amstelodamum 81, 1989, pp. 83-123, p. 93 (with ill.). - David A. de Witt: Jan van Noordt. Painter of History and Portraits in Amsterdam, Montreal 2007, pp. 153-5, no. 34 (with ill.).
Exhibitions
Ausstellung von Werken alter Kunst aus dem Privatbesitz von Mitgliedern des Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums-Vereins, Berlin, Königliche Akademie der Künste, May 1914, no. 112.