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Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Domi argus, foris talpa

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Otto van Veen
1556-1629

Domi argus, foris talpa

7 1/8 x 5 3/4 inches (181 x 145 mm)
Brush and gray and 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 69

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 on reverse, 1607, p. 145.
Also see records on Van Veen Album (III, 146-157).
Inscriptions/Markings
Inscribed on the album page below the design, in brown ink, "Domi argús foris talpa (title)/ Cúm túa pervideas ocúlis mala lippús inúnctis/ Cur in amicorúm vitiis tam cernis acútúm/ Qúam út aquila aút serpens Epidaúriús at tibi contra/ Evenit, inqúirant vitia in túa rúrsús et illi" (When you look over your own sins, your eyes are rheumy and daubed with ointment; why, when you view the failings of your friends, are you as keen of sight as an eagle or as a serpent of Epidaurus?). The text is from Horace, "Satires", Book I, 3, lines 25-28.
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. 88, no. 181.
Classification
Century Drawings
School
Department