Girl Making a Garland; (verso) Portrait of a Young Man | Hans Suess von Kulmbach | All | European Paintings | Collection Database | Works of Art

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Inscribed: (on scroll) .ICH PINT MIT, VERGIS MEIN NIT. (I bind with forget-me-nots); (right center, falsely, with initials of Albrecht Dürer) AD [monogram] / 1508

Gallery LabelEarly accounts name this Hans as the assistant of Jacopo de'Barbari during the time that the Italian served in Nuremberg as the portraitist and illuminator for Emperor Maximillian I, from April 1500 to about 1503, and thereafter from Frederick the Wise in Wittenberg, from 1503 to 1505. Kulmbach subsequently joined the workshop of Albrecht Dürer, with whom he enjoyed a lifelong friendship and collaboration. This association perhaps accounts for the false Dürer monogram and date above the cat.

This portrait is stylistically very close to Barbari's Portrait of a Man (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), signed with his mark, the caduceus, and his initials IB and dating to about 1505. The charming genre depiction on the reverse represents a girl making a garland of forget-me-nots, a reference to the entreaty on the banderole that the young man not be forgotten by his beloved ("Vergis mein nit").

This work joins a large number that are falsely dated and signed with Dürer's monogram. Both recto and verso are more closely related to Kulmbach's paintings of about 1513.

Provenance?private collection, Vienna (before 1800); Francesco Santangelo, Palazzo Carafa di Maddaloni, Naples (by 1815–d. 1836); his son, Nicola Santangelo, Palazzo Carafa di Maddaloni (1836–47); his brother, Michele Santangelo, Palazzo Carafa di Maddaloni, and Villa dei Santangelo, Pollena (1847–d. 1876); Santangelo family, Pollena (1876–at least 1884; cat., 1876, no. 33, as by Dürer); Dominic Colnaghi (in 1906); J. Pierpont Morgan, New York (by 1909–d. 1913; his estate, 1913–17)

Exhibition History

London. Burlington Fine Arts Club. "Early German Art," 1906, nos. 39, 39A.

New York. M. Knoedler & Co.. "The Artist and the Animal," May 7–24, 1968, no. 20.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Gothic and Renaissance Art in Nuremberg, 1300–1550," April 8–June 22, 1986, no. 162.

Nuremberg. Germanisches Nationalmuseum. "Nürnberg 1300–1550: Kunst der Gotik und Renaissance," July 24–September 28, 1986, no. 162.

References

Domenico Romanelli. Napoli antica e moderna. Naples, 1815, vol. 3, p. 92.

Carlo Celano. Notizie del bello, dell'antico e del curioso della città di Napoli. 3, Naples, 1858, p. 690.

Catalogo della pinacoteca dei marchesi Santangelo di Napoli. Naples, 1876, pp. 15–16, no. 33.

Moriz Thausing. Dürer: Geschichte seines Lebens und seiner Kunst. 2nd ed. [1st ed., 1876]. Leipzig, 1884, vol. 1, p. 366 n. 1.

Catalogue of the Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1905, unpaginated addenda for October–December 1909.

[Max J.] Friedländer. "Die Ausstellung altdeutscher Kunst im Burlington Fine Arts Club zu London—Sommer 1906." Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 29 (1906), p. 587.

Christian Rauch. Die Trauts: Studien und Beiträge zur Geschichte der Nürnberger Malerei. Strasbourg, 1907, pp. 78–79, pl. 24 (woman).

"The Pierpont Morgan Gift." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 13 (January 1918), p. 17.

Friedrich Winkler. Letter to Harry B. Wehle. April 30, 1929.

F[riedrich]. Winkler. "Ein Bildnistäfelchen des Hans von Kulmbach." Pantheon 6 (July–December 1930), pp. 452–54, ill. (both sides).

Hans Tietze. Meisterwerke europäischer Malerei in Amerika. Vienna, 1935, p. 339, pl. 206 (woman) [English ed., "Masterpieces of European Painting in America," New York, 1939, p. 323, pl. 206 (woman)].

Charles L. Kuhn. A Catalogue of German Paintings of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in American Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1936, p. 56, no. 214.

Franz Stadler. Hans von Kulmbach. Vienna, 1936, pp. 54, 129, nos. 118a (man), 118b (woman), pl. 58 (both sides).

Emil Waldmann. "Deutsche Kunst in amerikanischen Museen." Der Türmer: Deutsche Monatshefte 39 (January 1937), p. 304, ill. (woman).

Fritz Tr. Schulz in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler. 33, Leipzig, 1939, p. 352.

Harry B. Wehle and Margaretta Salinger. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Early Flemish, Dutch and German Paintings. New York, 1947, pp. 190–91, ill. (both sides).

Holbein and His Contemporaries. Exh. cat., John Herron Art Museum. Indianapolis, 1950, unpaginated, no. 42 (woman), ill. (woman).

Friedrich Winkler. Hans von Kulmbach: Leben und Werk eines fränkischen Künstlers der Dürerzeit. Kulmbach, 1959, p. 56, pls. 32 (man), 33 (woman).

P[eter]. Strieder in Kindlers Malerei Lexikon. 3, Zürich, 1966, pp. 777, 780, ill. (woman).

E[berhard]. Schenk z[u]. S[chweinsberg]. "Pictura francofordiana." Schriften des Historischen Museums Frankfurt am Main 13 (1972), pp. 33–38, ill. (both sides).

Lisa Oehler. "Das Dürermonogramm auf Werken der Dürerschule." Städel-Jahrbuch, n.s., 4 (1973), pp. 40, 77–78 n. 7, figs. 5 (woman), 33 (detail of signature).

Rüdiger Klessmann. Letter to Walter Liedtke. December 23, 1981.

Sigrid Walther. Hans Süß von Kulmbach. Dresden, 1981, pp. 6–7, fig. 2 (woman).

Barbara Rosalyn Butts. "'Dürerschüler' Hans Süss von Kulmbach." PhD diss., Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 1985, pp. 76–78, figs. 57–58 (both sides).

Kurt Löcher in Gothic and Renaissance Art in Nuremberg, 1300–1550. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1986, pp. 343–44, no. 162, ill. (both sides) [German ed., "Nürnberg, 1300–1550: Kunst der Gotik und Renaissance"].

Angelica Dülberg. Privatporträts: Geschichte und Ikonologie einer Gattung im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1990, pp. 16, 148, 243, no. 196, figs. 198 (man), 199 (woman).

Brigitte Lymant. "Die sogenannte 'Folge aus dem Alltagsleben' von Israhel van Meckenem: Ein spätgotischer Kupferstichzyklus zu Liebe und Ehe." Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 53 (1992), pp. 39, 44 n. 90.

Helmut Nickel. "The Bride and the Cat: A Possible Source for Overbeck's 'Freundschaftsbild' of Franz Pforr." Metropolitan Museum Journal 27 (1992), pp. 183, 185, 187 nn. 2–4, figs. 2–3 (both sides).

Peter Strieder. Tafelmalerei in Nürnberg, 1350–1550. Königstein, 1993, pp. 131–32, 250, no. 124, figs. 154 (color, woman), 494 (man).

Sigrid Dittrich and Lothar Dittrich. Lexikon der Tiersymbole: Tiere als Sinnbilder in der Malerei des 14.–17. Jahrhunderts. Petersberg, Germany, 2004, pp. 259, 266 n. 70.

Sabine Lata. Wolf Traut als Maler. Nuremberg, 2005, p. 361, no. X-58.

Peter Klein. Letter to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. April 3, 2006.

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