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Otto van Veen
1556-1629
Vera philosophia mortis est meditatio
7 1/8 x 5 3/4 inches (180 x 145 mm)
Brush and gray and light brown 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; incised with the stylus.
Van Veen Album, folio 79
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, "Vera philosophia mortis est meditatio (title) / Inter spem cúramqúe, timorem inter et iras, / Omnem crede diem tibi illúxisse súpremum / Grata superveniet, qúae non sperabitur Hora" (Amid hopes and cares, amid fears and passions, believe that every day that has dawned is your last. Welcome will come to you another hour unhoped for). The text is from Horace, "Epistles", Book I, 4, lines 12-14.
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. 92, no. 191.
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Century Drawings
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