Youth Leaping from a Precipice
Artist: Leonard Bramer (Dutch, 1596-1674)
Medium: pen and brush and black ink on paper
Dimensions: 14 3/16 in. x 11 5/16 in. (36 cm. x 28.8 cm.)
Credit Line: Bequest of the Honorable James Bowdoin III
Accession Number: 1811.130
- "62"
Type: inscription
Location: upper right
Materials: pen and brown ink - foolscap
Type: watermark
Location:
Materials:
- James Bowdoin III( Collector, Boston) - 1811.
- Bowdoin College Museum of Art( Museum, Brunswick, Maine) 1811- . Bequest
- Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College
- Bowdoin College Museum of Art. ( 5/17/1985 - 7/7/1985)
- Clark Art Institute. ( 9/14/1985 - 10/27/1985)
- University of Kansas. ( 1/19/1986 - 3/2/1986)
- Art Gallery of Ontario. ( 5/17/1986 - 6/29/1986)
Type: catalogue Author: Henry Johnson Document Title: Catalogue of the Bowdoin College Art Collections Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine Reference: no. 107 Remarks: (as Unknown) Section Title: Pt. I, The Bowdoin Drawings Date: 1885 Type: catalogue Author: Bowdoin College Museum of Art Document Title: Bowdoin Museum of Fine Arts, Walker Art Building Edition: 4th Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine Reference: no. 107 Remarks: (as Unknown) Publisher: Bowdoin College Section Title: Descriptive Catalogue of the . . . Date: 1930 Type: exhibition catalogue Author: David P. Becker Document Title: Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine Location: p. 206 Reference: no. 101 (illus.) Publisher: Bowdoin College Date: 1985
This drawing, first attributed to Leonard Bramer by Sir Robert Witt in 1936 and supported by Frits Lugt, has not been connected to any narrative. In a letter to the BCMA dated July 1992, Brad O'Keefe suggested that the subject is a scene from Act IV of Torquato Tasso's pastoral play, Aminta, written in 1573. The shepherd Aminta, distraught after learning of the death of the nymph Sylvia, throws himself off a cliff. His friend, Ergasto, the figure at right, later reports Aminta's suicide to Sylvia, who had not actually died. Realizing her love for Aminta, Sylvia searches for his body and finds that he fell into bushes and survived.
Michiel Plomp classified the drawing with a group of other possibly mythological scenes, including Io Plunging into the Sea and several other unidentified subjects (Plomp, 318). Bramer did execute a series of drawings for Battista Guarini’s Il pastor fido, another pastoral play, and the unidentified subject drawings may possibly all connect to a series of illustrations from Aminta, which inspired Guarini’s play.
Sarah Cantor
References:
Plomp, Michiel. “List of Drawing Sets.” In Ten Brink Goldsmith, Jane, Paul Huys Janssen, Michiel Kersten, John Michael Montias, Michiel Plomp, and Adrienne Quarles van Ufford. Leonaert Bramer 1596-1674: Ingenious Painter and Draughtsman in Rome and Delft, 311-19. Zwolle: Uitgeverij Waanders, 1994.
Commentary credited to David P. Becker (or not otherwise captioned) appeared in his catalogue Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College (Brunswick: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1985).