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The Three Graces
Georg Petel (German, about 1601–1634)
German (Augsburg)
about 1620
Medium/Technique
Gilded bronze
Dimensions
Overall: 30.5 x 19.1 x 5.1 cm (12 x 7 1/2 x 2 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of John Goelet in honor of Hanns Swarzenski
Accession Number1976.842
CollectionsEurope
ClassificationsSculpture
This sculpture is based on a painting of the same subject by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), and the figures originally supported a basket or bowl of fruit or flowers. The sculptor captured the corporeality of Rubens's figures and played on ideas of two- and three-dimensionality by working in relief, an intermediary between painting and sculpture in the round.
DescriptionSeveral of the sculptures of the German sculptor, Georg Petel, are interpretations of two-dimensional compositions by the Flemish baroque painter, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). This group is certainly inspired by Rubens's Three Graces in the Vienna Academy Museum (painted in about 1620-21). He made an ivory carving of the same group which was listed in the 1635 inventory of the Duke of Buckingham, the present location of which is unknown; it is possible that the bronze group was cast after this ivory. A later bronze cast is in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig (Bro. 181). The figures, with their raised arms and flat palms, originally supported either a shell or a basket of flowers or fruits.
Provenance1878, Charles Emile Jacque (b. 1813 - d. 1894), Paris; December 13-14, 1878, Jacque sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, lot 21 [see note 1]. Paul Bournet de Verron (d. 1882), Paris [see note 2]; by inheritance to his brother-in-law, Mr. Bucquet (d. 1889); by inheritence to Antoinette and Maurice Bucquet, Paris [see note 2]. 1963, private collection, Paris [see note 3]. 1963, acquired on the Paris art market by Joseph de Chellinck d'Elseghem, Brussels; June 30, 1969, Elseghem sale, Sotheby's, London, lot 29, to David Peel and Co., London; 1969, sold by Peel to John Goelet, New York; 1976, year-end gift of John Goelet to the MFA. (Accession Date: January 12, 1977)
NOTES:
[1] Unless otherwise noted, the provenance is based upon Fiona Healy's catalogue entry in A House of Art: Rubens as Collector, by Kristin Lohse Belkin and Fiona Healy (Schoten, 2004), p. 257, cat. no. 62.
[2] On the Bournet de Verron collection and its provenance, see Gaston Migeon, "La Collection Bucquet-Bournet de Verron," Les Arts, vol. 10, no. 117 (September 1911): 7-22. M. and Mlle. Bucquet lent the sculpture to the "Exposition d'objets d'art du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance" (Jacques Seligmann, Paris, 1913), cat. no. 99.
[3] Connaissance des Arts, no. 134 (April, 1963): 47.
NOTES:
[1] Unless otherwise noted, the provenance is based upon Fiona Healy's catalogue entry in A House of Art: Rubens as Collector, by Kristin Lohse Belkin and Fiona Healy (Schoten, 2004), p. 257, cat. no. 62.
[2] On the Bournet de Verron collection and its provenance, see Gaston Migeon, "La Collection Bucquet-Bournet de Verron," Les Arts, vol. 10, no. 117 (September 1911): 7-22. M. and Mlle. Bucquet lent the sculpture to the "Exposition d'objets d'art du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance" (Jacques Seligmann, Paris, 1913), cat. no. 99.
[3] Connaissance des Arts, no. 134 (April, 1963): 47.