Lot 102: f - PETER VAN LINT ANTWERP 1609 - 1690

THE FARNESE HERCULES

measurements note
426 by 265mm

signed with monogram, inscribed and dated in brown ink, lower centre: PVL.D.L. a Roma 1639

numbered in black chalk, upper centre: 24
black chalk heightened with white chalk on blue paper

NOTE

Pieter van Lint left Antwerp for Italy at some point after 1633, and during his seven year stay made numerous drawn copies after the works he saw there, both antique and renaissance. The Farnese Hercules was one of the works most frequently drawn, and indeed, van Lint made two other studies of the sculpture: one is in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (see K. Andrews, Catalogue of Netherlandish Drawings, Edinburgh 1985, vol. I, p. 47, reproduced vol. II, fig. 313), and the second in the Lugt Collection (see Flemish Drawings of the Seventeenth Century: from the collection of Frits Lugt, Institut Néerlandais, Paris, exhibition catalogue, London, Victoria & Albert Museum, et al, 1972, pp. 65-66, cat. no. 48, reproduced plate 84).

All three studies are dated 1639, drawn in the same media, and monogrammed and inscribed in an identical manner to the present sheet. Each sheet is, however, drawn from a different angle, so that they add up to a total impression of the sculpture in three dimensions. Van Lint would have studied the Hercules in the Palazzo Farnese, Rome, where it was sited under an archway in the Cortile, the same location where Goltzius had drawn it in 1591. Van Lint's copy is, in most respects, very faithful to the sculpture; only the slight elongation of the legs reveals that his viewpoint was somewhat underneath the Hercules.