Currently not on view

Ceres and Proserpine

Hendrik Goudt, Dutch, 1585–1630
after Adam Elsheimer, German, 1578–1610

x1934-468

This dramatic night scene is the prelude to an episode of divine punishment from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In searching for her daughter Proserpina, who had been abducted by Pluto, the goddess Ceres asked an old woman for a drink of water and was mocked by a boy for gulping down the liquid so quickly. Angered, she spat at the boy and turned him into a speckled lizard. Like all of Goudt’s prints, this one reproduces a work by the German painter Elsheimer, with whom Goudt studied in Rome between 1604 and 1610. Elsheimer’s innovative nocturnal interpretations of religious and mythological subjects, incorporating both natural and artificial light sources, were disseminated through Goudt’s so-called black prints; their inky darkness, here achieved with virtuoso engraving, influenced Rembrandt’s atmospheric night etchings.

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Information

Object Number

x1934-468

Maker

Hendrik Goudt Adam Elsheimer

Medium

Engraving

Dates

1610

Dimensions

plate (sheet trimmed to plate): 32.1 × 24.7 cm (12 5/8 × 9 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Bequest of Junius S. Morgan, Class of 1888

Place Made

Europe, Italy

Signatures

Collector Jules Gerbeau's stamp, verso: (Lugt 1165)

Type

engravings, prints

Subject

women, figures (representations), boys, men, mythology, night

Materials

printing ink

Jules Gerbeau [1833-1906, Lugt 1156]. Junius S. Morgan [1867-1932]; bequeathed to Princeton University Art Museum, 1932.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/682354769

Adam vom Bartsch, Le peintre graveur ... (Vienne: J. V. Degen, 1803-05)., no. 5

5907 1803

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/902741411

Eugène Dutuit, "Volume 4," Manuel de l'amateur d'estampes, par M. Eugène Dutuit (Paris: A. Lévy, 1881)., no. 6, p. 522

6678 1881

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8532176

F.W.H. Hollstein, "Douffet-Floris," Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings, and woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700, (Amsterdam: M. Hertzberger, 1949-2010)., no. 5, p. 155

6576 1952