- Museum number
- 1863,0509.937
- Description
-
Ulysses and Circe; Ulysses in a boat with companions (in the form of pigs), Circe standing on the shore, offering him a vessel
Pen and black ink, with red, blue, grey and brown wash, sheet cut down
- Production date
- 1500-1550 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 97 millimetres
-
Width: 76 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Rowlands 1993
This drawing and a companion, 1863,0509.936, probably survivors from a series of similar scenes of moral tales from antiquity, were acquired as by Hans Burgkmair (q.v.), and subsequently, certainly after the acquisition of the two copies after these drawings (1878,1214.631 ; 1878,1214.632), were reattributed to Georg Pencz. There can be little doubt that this is correct, for the types of figures are strongly characteristic of him, especially the block-shaped heads with their chiselled features, which are emphasised in the present drawings through the use of a blunt-ended pen. The compact arrangement of the compositions recalls those of some scenes in the series of engravings, ‘The story of Joseph’, such as ‘Joseph being lowered into the well’, and ‘Joseph being sold to the merchants’ (Landau, ‘Pencz’, pp. 83-84, nos. 9, 10, repr.). The representation of the subjects, although on a slightly smaller scale than usual, can be associated with Pencz's woodcuts illustrating Hans Sachs's verses, a few of which are of similar proportions, as that for his 'Klagred der Welt' (The Complaint of the World) (Landau, ‘Pencz’, p. 153, no. 130, repr.), and which, unlike the engravings, do not have quasi-antiquarian, classical settings.
The literary source of the first of these two subjects (1863,0509.936) is the ‘Gesta Romanorum’. The present drawing bears no close relation with either Ovid's or Virgil's descriptions of Ulysses and his companions' encounter with Circe, the enchantress. This is because Pencz's source, both literary and visual, is the account in Hartmann Schedel's ‘Welchronik’, (the 'Nuremberg Chronicle', ‘tercia etas mundi’, fol. xli recto) and the accompanying woodcut illustration, most probably designed by Michel Wolgemut (q.v.). Schedel, as he informs us, based his text on Boethius's ‘Consolationis Philosophiae’ (Book iv, 3.87-88), while Pencz undoubtedly had Wolgemut's example in mind when producing this drawing. Pencz, employing the same arrangement of the details of the composition, has transformed it convincingly into a German Renaissance ‘mise-en-scène’. The only concession to Wolgemut's Gothic model is the maintenance of its quaint disregard of scale in the excessive size of both of the figures who occupy the boat, and of Circe and her assistant standing on the shore, compared with the size of the boat. The animals too are depicted in a similar way, although those chosen are not entirely the same as those that appear in Wolgemut's woodcut.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1863
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1863,0509.937