Europa and the Bull

Artist Bernardo Cavallino and follower (Johann Heinrich Schönfeld? 1609-1683) (Italian, 1616- ca.1656)

Dateca. 1645

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsOverall: 24 × 31 13/16 inches (60.96 × 80.82 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number31-50

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

European Art

Terms

DescriptionIn the center foreground, amid a grove of trees, a female figure representing Europa sits on the back of a recumbant bull. With her right hand, she places a strand of flowers around the bull's neck. A female attendant stands directly behind the bull's head; to the left of her is the faint trace of another attendant. Two other female attendants stand in the left middle ground. The sea, sky and a distant mountainous shore appear in the right background.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Exhibition of Italian Baroque Painting, 17^th and 18^th Centuries, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, May 16- June 15, 1941, no. 2.

Caravaggio and the Caravaggisti, Durlacher Brothers, New York, March 4-30, 1946, no. 5.

Caravaggio and the Tenebrosi, Seattle Art Museum, April 8-May 30, 1954, no cat.

The Baroque Painters of Naples, John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida, March 4- April 4, 1961, no. 28.

The Gods of High Olympus and a Hero, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, February 15-March 20, 1983, no. 5.

Bernardo Cavallino of Naples, 1616-1656, The Cleveland Museum of Art, November 14-December 30, 1984; Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, January 26-March 24, 1985; Museo Pignatelli Cortes, Naples, April 24-June 26, 1985, no. 36.

Gallery Label

The Latin poet Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, tells a tale of the god Jupiter, who fell in love with Europa, daughter of the Phoenician King Agenor. Jupiter, by disguising himself as a bull, succeeded in persuading Europa to climb upon his back and carried her off to the island of Crete. Like many Neapolitan artists of his generation, Cavallino was influenced by Caravaggio, who had worked in Naples, an influence apparent in the dramatic contrasts of light and shade that add drama and anticipation to this scene. There is an elfin quality to the two principal figures here, typical of Cavallino's intense but piquant style. The coarser figures in the background, however, were probably added by an assistant.

Provenance

With Salvatore Romano (1875-1955), Florence and Naples, by 1909-1931 [1];

Purchased from Romano by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1931.

NOTES:

[1] According to Paolo Romano, Salvatore’s son, in a telephone conversation, December 6, 1987, it is unknown when and where Romano purchased the painting.

Published References

Aldo de Rinaldis, Bernardo Cavallino (Naples, 1909), 16.

Federico Hermanin, “Über einige unedierte Bilder des neapolitaner Malers Bernardo Cavallino,” Monatshefte für Kunstwissenschaft 4, no. 4 (1911): 184-185, (repro.).

Aldo de Rinaldis, “Note sulla pittura napoletana del seicento,” Ausonia 7 (1912): 227. Discusses landscape background.

Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, eds., Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, vol. 6 (Leipzig: Seemann, 1912), 225.

Andrea Corna, Dizionario della storia dell’arte in Italia (Piacenza: C. & C. Tarantola, 1915), 161.

Aldo de Rinaldis, “Bernardo Cavallino ed alcuni suoi nuovi quadri,” Rassegna d’Arte 17 (1917): 179.

Aldo de Rinaldis, “Bernardo Cavallino ed alcuni suoi quadri inediti,” Napoli Nobilissima 1, no. 1 (1920): 3-4, 6, (repro.).

Aldo de Rinaldis, Bernardo Cavallino (Rome: Società Editrice della Biblioteca d’Arte Ilustrata, 1921), 17.

Ettore Sestieri, “Ricerche su Cavallino,” Dedalo 2 (1921-22): 184.

Aldo de Rinaldis, Die süditalienische Malerei des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Pantheon Verlag Für Kunstwissenschaft, 1929), 38.

Aldo de Rinaldis, La pittura del seicento nell’Italia meridionale (Verona: Casa editrice Apollo, 1929), 32.

Andrea Corna, Dizionario della storia dell’arte in Italia, 2^nd ed. (Piacenza, Carlo Tarantola, 1930), 227.

“Kansas City Gets $1,000,000 Art Here,” New York Times (February 20, 1931): 16.

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Handbook of the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1933), 136.

Thomas Carr Howe, Exhibition of Italian Baroque Painting, 17^th and 18^th Centuries, exh. cat. (San Francisco: California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1941), 14, 34, (repro.).

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2^nd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 168.

Caravaggio and the Caravaggisti, exh. cat. (New York: Durlacher Bros., 1946), unpaginated, (repro.).

Claudia Refice, “Ancora del pittore Bernardo Cavallino,” Emporium 113 (January-June 1951): 262.

Reproduction of Seattle Art Museum Records from The University of Washington Libraries, Caravaggio and the Tenebrosi, April 8-May 30, 1954, NAMA curatorial file.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 262.

Willem Rudolf Juynboll, “Bernardo Cavallino,” Bulletin Museum Boymans-van Beuningen 11, no. 3 (1960): 86.

Creighton E. Gilbert, “Baroque Painters of Naples,” The Ringling Museums, Sarasota, Florida: Bulletin I, no. 2, exh. cat. (March 1961): 31, (repro.).

Oreste Ferrari, “Seicento napoletano a Sarasota,” Napoli Nobilissima 1 (1961-62): 236, 238, (repro.).

Foreign Schools: Catalogue, vol. 1 (Liverpool: City Council, 1963), 47n3.

Ann Percy, “Bernardo Cavallino” (master’s thesis, Pennsylvania State University, 1965), 48, 77.

Francesco Negri Arnoldi, “Notiziario: Attività delle soprintendenze: Emilia,” Bollettino d’Arte 53 (1968): 160.

Francesco Negri Arnoldi, IV Mostra di opera restaurate, exh. cat. (Tràpani: Museo Regionale Pepoli, 1969), 14.

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

Dizionario enciclopedico dei pittori e degli incisori italiani, vol. 3 (Turin: Bolaffi, 1972), 207.

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 50, 470, 589.

Storia di Napoli, vol. 5, part 2 (Naples: Società editrice storia di Napoli, 1972), 983n111.

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), 113, (repro.).

Aldo de Rinaldis, Neapolitan Painting of the Seicento (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1976), 36-37.

Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 22 (Rome: Enciclopedia Italiana,1979), 788.

Ross. E. Taggart and Roger Ward, The Gods of High Olympus and a Hero, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1983), 8.

Bernardo Cavallino of Naples, 1616-1656, exh. cat. (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1984), 6, 15, 19, 101, 121, 123, (repro.).

Michael Stoughton, “Exhibition Reviews: Fort Worth, Bernardo Cavallino,” Burlington Magazine 127 (1985): 194.

Nicola Spinosa, “Altre aggiunte a Bernardo Cavallino e qualche precisazione sui rapport con Nicolas Poussin e la sua cerchia,” Paragone, no. 485 (July 1990): 54-55.

Jane Davidson Reid, The Oxford Guide to classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300-1990, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 424.

Elliot W. Rowlands, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian Paintings 1300-1800 (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 281-286, (repro.).

Ovide, Les Métamorphoses: Illustrées par la peinture baroque, vol. 1, trans. Georges Lafaye, ed. Diane de Selliers (Paris: Diane de Selliers, 2003), unpaginated, (repro.).

Information about a particular artwork or image, including provenance information, is based upon historic information and may not be currently accurate or complete. Research on artwork and images is an ongoing process, and the information about a particular artwork or image may not reflect the most current information available to the Museum. If you notice a mistake or have additional information about a particular artwork or image, please e-mail provenance@nelson-atkins.org.