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Otto van Veen
1556-1629
Virtus inconcussa
8 x 6 1/2 inches (203 x 165 mm)
Brush and gray oil, and pen and brown ink; on a paper prepared with a light brown ground of lead white tinted with yellow-brown ochre and a little red in oil medium.
Van Veen Album, folio 1
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1909.
Notes
Watermark: since the drawings are laid down, no watermarks, if any, are visible, even with fiber-optic light.
Engraved in reverse, 1607.
Also see records on Van Veen Album (III, 146-157).
Engraved in reverse, 1607.
Also see records on Van Veen Album (III, 146-157).
Inscriptions/Markings
Inscribed by the artist within the design, in brown ink, on scrolls at left and right, "NEC METV" and "NEC SPE"; at extreme lower center, "virtus repulsae nescia sordidae in / contaminatis fulget honorib[u]s / nec sumit aut ponit secures". On the album page below the design, in another hand, in brown ink, "Virtus inconcussa (title) / Virtús repúlsae nescia sordidae, in / contaminatis fulget honoribus, / nec sumit aut ponit secures / arbitrio popúlaris aúrae" (True worth, that never knows ignoble defeat, shines with undimmed glory, nor takes up nor lays aside the axes at the fickle mob's behest). The text is from Horace, "Odes", Book III, 2, lines 17-20.
Bibliography
Stampfle, Felice, with the assistance of Ruth S. Kraemer and Jane Shoaf Turner. Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries and Flemish Drawings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1991, p. 68, no. 113.
Artist
Classification
Century Drawings
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