View of a Castle (recto); Eight-Sided Cup (verso)

Description

This drawing depicts a castle in southern Germany in the area around the Danube River known for its wooded and rocky heights and dramatic views. Wolfgang Huber's meandering, pen and ink lines describe the contours of the earth and the lushness of summer foliage in a horizontal layout that focuses on the middle distance with a barely recorded foreground. Huber may have made the drawing during a journey between Feldkirch and Vienna as he traveled along the Danube. In 1513 when this drawing was made, landscape was rarely depicted as a subject in and of itself, but artists in the Danube region such as Huber exhibited a profound sensitivity to nature. A drawing on the reverse of the sheet depicts a cup studded with gems and a poem written in a contemporary hand telling the mythological story of Actaeon's transformation into a stag when he intruded upon the goddess Diana and her nymphs bathing.

Provenance

Arnold Otto Meyer, Hamburg (1825-1903), Lugt 1994 (not stamped) (?-1914); his sale, C. G. Boerner, Leipzig, 19-20 March 1914, no. 300 (1914); art market, 1930 (according to Halm 1930, 4); Probably Collection Prince Franz Josef II von Liechtenstein (1906-1989), Vienna (according to file; no stamp) (?-ca. 1950); with Kunsthandlung Walter Feilchenfeldt, Zurich (1950)

View of a Castle (recto); Eight-Sided Cup (verso)

Wolfgang Huber

1513

Accession Number

1951.277

Medium

pen and brown ink

Dimensions

Sheet: 13.1 x 21.2 cm (5 3/16 x 8 3/8 in.)

Classification

Drawing

Museum

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland, United States

Credit Line

John L. Severance Fund