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Otto van Veen
1556-1629
Qúid non auro pervium
7 1/8 x 5 3/4 inches (181 x 145 mm)
Brush and gray and light brown oil, and pen and brown ink; on a paper prepared with a dark brown ground of lead white tinted with yellow-brown ochre and a little red in oil medium.
Van Veen Album, folio 60
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 on the album page below the design, in brown ink, "Qúid non auro pervium (title) / Inclusam Danaem turris aënea / Robústaeque fores, et vigilúm canúm / Tristes excúbiae munierant satis / Noctúrnis ab adúlteris / Si non Acrisiúm virginis abdiatae / Cústodem pavidúm, Júpiter et Venús / Risissent, fore enim tútúm iter et patens, / Converso in pretiúm Deo. / Aúrúm per medios ire satellites / Et perrúmpere amat saxa, potentiús / Ictú fúlmineo" (Tower of bronze, doors of oak, and the strict guard of watchdogs had quite protected imprisoned Danaë from nocturnal lovers, had not Jupiter and Venus laughed at Acrisius, anxious keeper of the hidden maiden. For they knew that the way would be safe and open, when the god had turned to gold. Gold loves to make its way through the midst of sentinels and to break through rocks, for 'tis mightier than the thunderbolt). The text is from Horace, "Odes", Book III, 16, lines 1-11.
Bibliography
Netherlandish drawings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and Flemish drawings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library / Felice Stampfle ; with the assistance of Ruth S. Kraemer and Jane Shoaf Turner. New York : The Library, 1991, p. 86, no. 172.
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Century Drawings
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