Unknown
Flemish
The Madness of Nebuchadnezzar, 1600-1650
oil on canvas
37 3/4 × 58 1/8 in.
SBMA, Gift of Wright S. Ludington
1957.4.2
RESEARCH PAPER
IDENTIFICATION
“The Madness of Nebuchadnezzar,” by an unknown Seventeenth Century Dutch painter, illustrates an important chapter in the development of landscape and pastoral themes in the Golden Age of Dutch painting. In addition, its theme shows what kinds of paintings patrons wanted to acquire in the burgeoning economy of the Netherlands in the early Baroque period.
The medium is oil on canvas. The painting is neither signed nor dated. On the reverse of the stretcher is an R. in white chalk, “Powers”; a fragment of a label with a pencil inscription that says “Savory.” The early history of the painting is unknown. It was sold at auction in 1939 from the collection of Mrs. Cornelius J. Sullivan. In 1940 it was sold again at Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York. Mr. Wright Ludington purchased it from Lois Shaw, Inc., New York then donated it to the museum in 1957.
STYLE
When purchased by its donor, the painting was thought to be the work of Roelant Savery (1576-1639), who was popular as a painter of fantasy landscapes in his day. According to Robert Henning, chief curator at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, that attribution is now in doubt. He based his opinion on the advice of two experts from Christie’s Fine Art Auctioneers and correspondence with Joaneath Spicer, Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, who wrote her dissertation on Savery. In a letter she stated: “No it is not by Roelandt Savery, nor is it in his manner really . . . I would doubt if any of the animals are even borrowed from Savery. As to the hand, I am much afraid that I can’t really help you on that. It could in fact be either Dutch or Flemish.” Ms. Spicer has not examined the painting personally; her opinion was based on a photograph.
Since it cannot be attributed to Savery, it is probably safe to label it “after Savery”; its painter or painters knew of Savery’s works and their economic success. The leaves and trees resemble Savery’s work. However, Savery’s canvasses usually included dramatic skies with prominent clouds. This background is very calm. It should be remembered that painters’ studios usually employed a large number of specialists so this painting could include the work of more than one hand.
CONTENT
The development of landscape painting was relatively slow during the Renaissance and Mannerist periods. Perhaps painters were uncomfortable with purely secular depictions. It is probably no accident that landscape painting had its more spectacular development in Holland where a flourishing mercantile class rushed to purchase more and more paintings, and where Protestant patrons felt uneasy with traditional Catholic religious motifs. Reformation preachers urged the faithful to go directly to the Bible for authority; the story of Nebuchadnezzar gives a serious theme to what is essentially a pleasant landscape representation. Perhaps it contained just enough religion to satisfy its original owner. “Peaceable Kingdom” portrayals have always been popular.
Portrayed is a story from the Old Testament, the book of Daniel, Chapter Four. Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who threw the Israelites Shadrach, Mehach and Abed-nego into the fiery furnace, refused to believe in the Hebrew God despite several dramatic proofs. Daniel interpreted a dream of Nebuchadnezzar’s to mean that God would punish him by making him mad. In time, “He was banished from the society of men and ate grass like oxen; his body was drenched by the dew of heaven, until his hair grew long like goats’ hair and his nails like eagles’ talons.”
The Santa Barbara canvas portrays a wide variety of animals that frolic in the foreground. Included are camels, a bull, peacock, doves, cougar, lion, impala, horses, puma, rooster, hen, fox, turkey, dog, hares, tortoise, guinea pig, wolves, goats, cow, rhinoceros, jackal, ostrich, squirrels, birds, parrot, monkey and a hawk. Behind them a lone, almost insignificant bearded old man creeps on all fours, alone and ignored by the happy animals.
Since the time of Leonardo animals had usually been portrayed accurately by artists. Because few observers had ever seen creatures in their natural habitats, people depended on ancient authorities such as Pliny for their information – and frequently misinformation. “Unnatural Natural History” was popularly quoted in the literature of the day. The authority was the Natural History of Gaius Plinius Secundus, or Pliny the Elder who died in CE 79 when he was asphyxiated while trying to escape the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. At the end of the Sixteenth Century translations of Pliny were popular in England, and in other European vernacular literature.
Although it seems incredible today, Europeans still cited as truth information that was over 1500 years old. Most of what is known now about natural sciences was written after 1850. The owner of this painting almost certainly knew Pliny and would probably have entertained guests with tales of the animals pictured.
It may be useful to see how several of the animals portrayed were described by Pliny. The following is from the translation of 1602 by the Englishman Dr. Philemon Holland.
Of Lions: “Mine author Aristotle saith moreover, that they live very long: and hee proveth it by this argument, That many of them are found toothlesse for very age . . . As fell and furious as he is otherwhiles, yet he dischargeth his rage upon men, before he sets upon women, and never preyeth on babes unlesse it be for extreme hunger.”
Of Peacocks: “The Peacock far surpasses all the rest of this kind, as well for beauty, as also for the wit and understanding that he hath; but principally for the pride and glory he takes in himself . . . On the other side, when he hath lost his taile, which usually he moulteth every yere when trees shed their leaves, until such time as trees blossom new, and his taile be grown again, he hath no delight to come abroad, but as if he were ashamed, or mourned, seeketh corners to hide himself in.”
Of Parrots: “It is all the body over greene, only it hath a collar about the necke of vermilion red, different from the rest of her feathers. The Parrat can skil (be taught) to words she heareth. She loveth wine well, and when shee hath drunk freely, is very pleasant, plaifull, and wanton. She hath an head as hard as is her break: when she learns to speak she must be beaten about the head with a rod of yron: for otherwise she careth for no blowes. When she taketh her flight down from any place, she lighteth upon her bil, and resteth thereupon and by that means favoreth her feet, which by nature are but weake and feeble, and so carrieth her owne weight more lightly.”
Interest was not confined to animals named by the ancients. Prominent in the painting is a turkey, which would have been a recently imported wonder from the new world. In addition, animals were iconographically interesting because of their relationship to Bible stories of Adam and Eve and Noah, as emblematic of saints and also as symbolic in the allegorical art and literature which was becoming very popular. Pastoral romance, in such English versions as Spenser’s Faerie Queen and Shepherd’s Calendar, John Lyly’s Euphues and Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Night’s Dream were doubly popular because they constituted a direct link to Roman and Greek Classics.
Possibly patrons who bought landscapes were merely pleased to own such pleasant representations of animals and nature. Two other paintings the Santa Barbara museum attributed to Joost de Momper show a contemporary fashion in the early Seventeenth Century Dutch landscape; they represent the calendar of the seasons.
Paintings such as The Madness of Nebuchadnezzer can be cited as important to the development of landscape later in the century by such painters as Jan van Goyen, Jacob van Ruisdael, Rubens and Rembrandt. Their acceptance and commercial success led to rich interpretation of landscape themes.
Prepared for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Docent Council
By Virginia Cornell
April 10, 1986
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bible, The New English Bible, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, 1970
Gerson, H. and E. H. Ter Kuile, Art and Architecture in Belgium, 1600-1800, Penguin Books, Great Britain, 1960
Janson, H.W., History of Art, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1977
Kettering, Alison McNeil, The Dutch Arcadia: Pastoral Art and Its Audience in the Golden Age, Totowa, N.J., 1983
Kitson, Michael, The Age of Baroque, New York, 1966
Leymarie, Jean, Dutch Painting from Geertgen to Sint Jans to Vermeer, Switzerland, 1956
Lyly, John, The Complete Works of John Lyly, ed. R. Warwick Bond, Oxford, 1942
Pliny’s Natural History, a Selection from Philemon Holland’s Translation, Ed. J. Newsome, Oxford, 1964
Rosenberg, Jakob, Seymour Slive and E.H. Ter Kuile, Dutch Art and Architecture: 1600-1800, Penguin Books, Baltimore, MD., 1966
Roelant Savery in Seiner Zeit (1576-1639), Exhibition Catalogue, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, 28.September bis 24.November 1985
Rooses, Max, Art in Flanders, New York, 1914
SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS
According to the prophet Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar was an ancient Babylonian king, who went mad and wandered the forests like an animal for a period of seven years, whereupon his sanity was restored. That miracle caused Nebuchadnezzar to recognize the almighty authority of Jehovah, the God of Israel. In our painting, we are presented with a veritable menagerie of animals, including domesticated livestock, exotic camels, common forest life, and ferocious predators such as the tiger at the left. It takes a bit of time to find the mad king in the far middle ground, crawling, as Daniel described, like a bull on all fours. While it remains unclear if there is any historical truth to the tale of Nebuchadnezzar’s seven years of madness, he was a very powerful king with a long reign, who strived to rival the Egyptian pharaohs in his dominance. In the 17th century, this story would have functioned as a morality tale to warn against the false vanity of kingly pride. For this unidentified artist, the biblical subject provided an excuse to imagine a forest teeming with animals in every imaginable pose with a playfulness that is, perhaps, less moralizing than the most famous version of this subject, by the Romantic artist William Blake, now at the Tate.
- Ludington Court Reopening, 2021