Allegory of Vanity

Artist Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, called Il Benedetto (Italian, 1609 - 1664)

Dateca. 1652-1655

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 38 3/4 x 56 3/4 inches (98.43 x 144.15 cm)
Framed: 53 3/8 x 71 1/4 x 4 3/8 inches (135.56 x 180.98 x 11.11 cm)

Credit LineGift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Object numberF61-69

Signedlower right, in black paint: "G [illegible] BENED [illegible] CASTILIONVS [?]

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

European Art

Terms

DescriptionSet on a grassy hill, a woman wearing a brownish pink robe and light blue wrap stands at left center holding a tambourine in her upraised left hand. Behind her is a large urn on a pedestal; the pedestal is inscribed "VAN[I]TAS. To the right are four male figures and a satyr. In the left background are a group of men and women, some of whom dance around a statue while others lie on the ground. On the grass in the foreground are musical and scientific instruments, a globe, armor and an overturned brass vase with flowers.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Exhibition of works by Holbein and Other Masters of the 16^th can 17^th Centuries, Royal Academy of Arts, London, December 9,1950-March 7, 1951, no. 367.

Genoese Masters: Cambiaso to Magnasco 1550- 1750, Dayton Art Institute, October 19-December 2, 1962; The Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL, January 5-February 17, 1963; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, March 19-May 5, 1963, no. 21.

Genova nell’età barocca, Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola, Genoa, Italy, May 2- July 26, 1992, no. 57.

The Art of Music, The San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA, September 26-February 7, 2015-2016.

Gallery Label

Castiglione was the leading artist from Genoa (a city in northwest Italy) of the1600s, and many of his works, including this example, are rich in symbolism. The subject is encapsulated by the Latin inscription Vanitas (Vanity) on the base of the urn at the center. The vanity of sensual pleasures, intellectual pursuits and power are symbolized by the overturned urn of flowers that will soon fade and by the discarded instruments of music, science and war. Love is depicted in its most transient form, lust, by the bacchante (a follower of the god Bacchus) with her tambourine in the foreground. At her feet lies a sprig of myrtle, a plant symbolizing Venus, goddess of love, and Bacchus, god of wine. The union of Venus and Bacchus produced a son, Priapus, god of lust and fertility before whose statue revelers dance in the background.

Provenance

Jean Baptiste Boyer d’Aguilles (1645-1709), Aix-en-Provence, France, by 1709;

By descent to his son, Pierre Boyer d’Aguilles (1682-1757), Aix-en-Provence, France, 1709;

Purchased by Henry Temple, 2nd Viscount Palmerston (1739-1802), Broadlands, near Romsey, Hampshire, England, October 1773-1802;

By descent to his son, Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784-1865), Broadlands, near Romsey, Hampshire, England, 1802-1865;

Inherited by his wife’s stepson, William Francis Cowper-Temple, 1st Baron Mount Temple (1811-1888), Broadlands, near Romsey, Hampshire, England, 1865-1888;

Inherited by his nephew, The Right Honorable Anthony Evelyn Melbourne Ashley (1836–1907), Broadlands, near Romsey, Hampshire, England, 1888-1907;

By descent to his son, Wilfrid William Ashley (1867–1939), Baron Mount Temple of Lee, Broadlands, near Romsey, Hampshire, England, 1907-1939;

By descent to his daughter, The Honorable Edwina Cynthia Annette Ashley (1901-1960), Countess of Mountbatten of Burma, Broadlands, near Romsey, Hampshire, England, 1939-1951;

Purchased from Ashley by Julius Weitzner, New York, 1951-February 7, 1952;

Purchased from Weitzner by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York, February 7, 1952-1961;

Its gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1961.

Published References

Pierre-Jean Mariette, Recueil d’estampes d’après les tableaux composioent [sic] le Cabinet de M. Boyer d’Aguilles, 2^nd ed. (Paris, 1744), (repro.).

George Kaspar Nagler, Neues allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon, vol.3 (Munich: Verlag von E.A. Fleischmann, 1836), 27.

Alfred von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, vol. 1 (Vienna: Verlag von Halm und Goldmann, 1906), 313.

Anthony F. Blunt, “The Drawings of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 8 (1945): 170.

Catalogue of the Exhibition of Works by Holbein and Other Masters of the 16^th and 17^th Centuries, 2^nd ed., exh. cat. (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1950), 143, (repro.).

Anthony Blunt, The Drawings of G. B. Castiglione and Stefano Della Bella in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle (London: Phaidon, 1954), 15n4, 16, 23, 36-37, (repro.).

Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, 2^nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1959), 226, (repro.).

Robert L. Manning and Bertina Suida Manning, Genoese Masters: Cambiaso to Magnasco 1550-1750, exh. cat. (Dayton: Dayton Art Institute, 1962), unpaginated.

Creighton Gilbert, “The Baroque in Genoa,” Arts Magazine 37 (January 1963): 59.

Edoardo Arslan,, “Opere del Grechetto a Genova, a Milano, e a Firenze,” Arte Lombarda 10, no.19 (1965): 177.

Ercolani Marani and Chiara Tellini Perina, Mantova: Le arti, vol. 3, Dalla metà del secolo XVI ai nostril giorni, pt. 1 (Mantua: Istituto Carlo d’Arco per la Storia di Mantova, 1965), 526n94, 527n102.

Ann Percy, “Magic and Melancholy: Castiglione’s ‘Sorceress’ in Hartford,” Wadsworth Atheneum Bulletin 6, no.3 (Winter 1970): 4, 6.

Ann Percy, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, exh. cat. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1971), 34n94, 35n95, 82, (repro.).

Louise S. Richards, “A Painting and Two Drawings by Castiglione,” The Connoisseur 177 (July 1971): 280n8.

Colette Bozzo Dufour, La pittura a Genova e in Liguria, vol.2, Dal Seicento al primo Novecento (Genoa: Sagep, 1971), 189.

Ralph T. Coe, “The Baroque and Rococo in France and Italy,” Apollo 96, no.130 (December 1972): 535, 537-38, (repro.) [repr. in Denys Sutton, ed., William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (London: Apollo Magazine, 1972), 67, 69-70, (repro.)].

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 49, 542, 589.

Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Colleciton: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century (London: Phaidon, 1973), 91-92, (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol.1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 111, (repro.).

Ubaldo Meroni, ed., Lettere e altri documneti intorno all storia della pittura: Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione detto il Grechetto, Salvator Rosa, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Monzambano: Edizioni per le fonti di storia della pittura, 1978), 7, 52.

Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 22 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1979), 85.

Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée, Dijon, Musée Magnin: Catalogue des tableaux et dessins italiens (XVe-XIXe siècles) (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1980), 59-60.

Important Italian Baroque Paintings, 1600-1700, exh. cat. (London: Matthiesen Fine Art Ltd., 1981), 36.

Federico Zeri, ed., Storia dell’arte italiana, pt. 2, Dal Medioevo al Novecento, vol.2, Dal Cinquecento all’Ottocento (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1981), (repro.).

Francis Russell, “A Connoisseur’s Taste: Paintings at Broadlands-I,” Country Life 171 January 28, 1982): 226.

Mauro Natale, ed., Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Federico Zeri, vol. 2 (Milan: Electa, 1984), 694-96, (repro.).

Il Seicento nell’arte e nella cultura con riferimenti a Mantova (Milan: Silvana, 1985), 72n37.

Escales du baroque, exh. cat. (Marseille: Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1988), 61.

Jane Roberts, A Study of Genius: Master Drawings and Watercolours from the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, exh. cat. (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1988), 80.

Barocco mediterraneo: Genova, Napoli, Venezia, nei musei di Francia, exh. cat. (Naples: Electa Napoli, 1989), 61.

Il genio di Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Il Grechetto, exh. cat. (Genoa: Sagep Editrice, 1990), 20, 195, (repro.).

James Vinson, ed., International Dictionary of Art and Artists, vol. 2, Artists (Chicago: St. James Press, 1990), 393, (repro.).

Ezia Gavazza, Genova nell’età barocca, exh. cat. ([Bologna, Italy] : Nuova Alfa, [1992]), 150-52, (repro.).

Mary Newcome Schleier, Kunst in der Republik Genus, 1528-1815, exh. cat. (Frankfurt: Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1992), 127.

Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée, “Exhibition Reviews: Genoa: Genova nell’età barocca,” Burlington Magazine 134 (1992): 622.

Michael Churchman and Scott Erbes, High Ideals and Aspirations: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1933-1993 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 87.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 168, (repro.).

A Gift to America: Masterpieces of European Painting from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, exh. cat. (New York: Abrams, 1994), 50.

Eliot W. Rowlands, Italian Paintings, 1300-1800: The Collections of the Nelson–Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson–Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 287-96, (repro.).

Timothy J. Standring, Martha Clayton, Castiglione: Lost Genius (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2013), 112(repro), dated as 1652-1655.

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