- Museum number
- 1889,0527.33
- Description
-
'The Florentine Picture-Chronicle' page from the album (recto of 1889,0527.34): Hercules or Herakles killing Antaeus at the mouth of a cave, an army to the left , the landscape continued from the left-hand page of the opening (1889,0527.30)
Pen and brown ink and brown wash over black chalk
- Production date
- 1470-1475 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 326 millimetres
-
Width: 226 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Watermark: Gothic R
The numbering at the top right is in a different, more recent hand and it also breaks the sequence as it should be 24 not 25. The BM registration sequence also breaks down here as it should be 1889,0527.31 rather than 33. As a result 1889,0527.31 and 32 are out os sequence.
Antaeus was a giant in Libya, the son of Poseidon/Neptune and the earth goddess Gaia (q.v.). Antaeus was strong only when he was in contact with the earth and Hercules/ Herakles defeated him by lifting him off the ground.
Lit.: S.Colvin, 'A Florentine Picture Chronicle', London, 1898; A.E. Popham and P. Pouncey, 'Italian drawings in the BM, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries', London, 1950, I, no. 274, II, pls. CCXXXVII-CCXLI.
For Popham & Pouncey 1950 entry see 1889,0527.1
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
BM, 'Padua in the 1450s', 1998, no. 16
- Acquisition date
- 1889
- Acquisition notes
- Popham & Pouncey 1950
The leaves of the book, in its present state, seem to be numbered 5 to 59 in a seventeenth(?)-century hand; the numbers, in the r.-hand top corner, have in many cases been partly trimmed away. The book was broken up by Ruskin, who was in the habit of lending parts of his books and manuscripts to friends and institutions in which he was interested, with the result that when the Museum purchased it from him in 1889 it contained only 49 folios. Of the remainder, two (1890,0314.1-4. Folios 13 and 14) were presented the next year by the trustees of the Ruskin Museum, Sheffield, and four (1900,0526.1-8. Folios 9, 22, 36, and 47) in 1900 by Ruskin's cousin, Mrs. Arthur Severn; folios 1 to 4 are missing, but there is nothing to indicate that they were not removed before Ruskin acquired the book.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1889,0527.33
