Unknown German Artist

Jupiter and Io

oil on canvas

first half of 19th century

canvas: 17½ x 12⅞ in. (41.5 x 32.5 cm)

framed: 22 x 18½ in. (55.9 x 47 cm)

"The composition of this canvas has its roots in an early 17th-century painting of Jupiter and Io by Matthäus Gundelach (see Sotheby's, London, 7 December 2017, lot 139, oil on panel, 61 by 39.8 cm), an Imperial Kammermaler of Rudolf II and close associate of Joseph Heintz the Elder.  That work by Gundelach, which was likely completed in Prague and dates to about 1610-1614, in turn drew clear inspiration from Correggio's well-known 16th-century painting of the same subject, which entered the Imperial Collection of Rudolf II in the first decade of the seventeenth century (now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). By the early 19th century, Gundelach's painting had entered a prominent Prussian collection, where it descended for generations."  S