Travelers with Animals on a Journey

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

Dateca. 1655

MediumReddish brown, blue, olive, and red oil paint on buff beige paper

DimensionsUnframed: 10 x 15 3/8 inches (25.4 x 39.05 cm)
Framed: 18 1/4 x 24 x 1 inches (46.36 x 60.96 x 2.54 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: acquired through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Milton McGreevy through the Westport Fund

Object numberF59-60/2

On View

Not on view

Collections

European Art

Terms

Exhibition History

Drawings Collection of Milton McGreevy, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, March 7-April 4, 1965, no. 24, as Pastorale.

Baroque Prints and Drawings, Drake University, Des Moines, IA, March 30-April 8, 1967, no. 6, no cat.

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione: Master Draughtsman of the Italian Baroque, Philadelphia Museum of Art, September 17-November 28, 1971, no. 60, as Pastoral Journey.

Master Drawings from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis, MO, September 22-December 9, 1989, unnumbered, as Pastoral Scene.

Master Drawings from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 17-March 25, 1990, no cat., as Pastoral Scene.

Master European Drawings from Polish Collections, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, April 17-June 6, 1993. NAMA addition.

Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, June 23-August 18, 1996; The Cummer Museum and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL, September 20-November 29, 1996; The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, December 21, 1996-March 2, 1997, no. 29, as Journey of a Patriarch.

Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, July 12-September 6, 1998, no cat., as Journey of a Patriarch.

Religious Subjects: A Variety of Approaches, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, June 8-October 16, 2011, no cat., as Travelers with Animals on a Journey.

From the Familiar to the Fantastic: Animals in Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, July 17-January 17, 2021.

Gallery Label

Castiglione was the leading Genoese artist of the 17th century and was celebrated for his paintings of pastoral subjects with cattle and sheep on the move. In this example, the rich and powerful effects of the red chalk are enhanced by the contrast with the blue of the sky. The subject is not entirely clear, but may possibly have a mythological or even biblical context as yet undeciphered.

Provenance

Dr. Alfred Scharf (1900-1965), London, by 1959;

Purchased from Scharf by Durlacher Brothers, New York, stock no. 713D, May 26-October 22, 1959 [1];

Purchased from Durlacher Brothers by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1959.

NOTES:

[1] Getty Research Library, Los Angeles, Durlacher Brothers Records, Box 14, Ledger 1937-1966, copy in Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.

Published References

“Drawings Collection of Milton McGreevy,” Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 4, no. 6 (March 7-April 4, 1965): 20-21, (repro.), as Pastorale.

Ann Percy, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione: Master Draughtsman of the Italian Baroque, exh. cat. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1971), 96, 100, (repro.), as Pastoral Journey.

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), 178, (repro.), as Pastorale.

Patricia Corbett, “Connoisseur’s World: Power Lines,” Connoisseur 219, no. 934 (November 1989): 44, as A Pastoral Scene.

Roger Ward and Mark S. Weil, Master Drawings from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, exh. cat. (St. Louis, MO: Washington University Gallery of Art, 1989), 8, 10, 28, (repro.), as Pastoral Scene.

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), 170, (repro.), as Pastoral Scene.

Roger Ward, Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 12, 22, 107-09, 144, 163, 165, (repro.), as Journey of a Patriarch.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 78, (repro.), as Travelers with Animals on a Journey.

Shelley Perlove and George S Keyes, eds., Seventeenth-Century European Drawings in Midwestern Collections the Age of Bernini, Rembrandt and Poussin (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 30, (repro.), as Travelers with Animals on a Journey (Journey of a Patriarch/Pastorale).

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