Otto van Veen

Image not available

Otto van Veen

1556-1629

Quid enim velocius aevo

Brush and off-white oil and light brown, and pen and brown ink; on a paper prepared with a brown ground of lead white tinted with yellow-brown ochre and a little red in oil medium; incised with the stylus.

7 1/8 x 5 13/16 inches (182 x 147 mm)

Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1909.

Van Veen Album, folio 91

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).

Inscription:

Inscribed on the album page below the design, in brown ink, "Qúid enim velociús aevo (title) / __ nec trepides in úsúm / Poscentis aevi paúca, fúgit retrò / Levis júventas, et décor, aridâ / Pellente lascivos amores / Canicie, facilemque somnúm / Non semper idem floribús est honos / Vernis neque úno Luna rubens nitet / vúltú, quid aeternis minorem / Consiliis animúm fatigas" (--and be not anxious for the needs of life, since 'tis little that it asks. Fresh youth and beauty are speeding away fast behind us, while wizened age is banishing sportive love and slumbers soft. Not forever do the flowers of spring retain their glory, nor does blushing Luna shine always with the selfsame face. Why, with planning for the future, weary thy soul unequal to the task?). The text is from Horace, "Odes", Book II, 11, lines 4-12.

Provenance:

Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), London and Florence; from whom purchased through Galerie Alexandre Imbert, Rome, in 1909 by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), New York (no mark; see Lugt 1509); his son, J. P. Morgan, Jr. (1867-1943), New York.

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. 95, no. 203.

Catalog link:

See more information »

Artist page:

School:

Century:

Classification:

Department: