Moyses van Uyttenbroeck (Wtenbrouck) - Woodland Landscape with Salmacis and Hermaphroditus

Moyses van Uyttenbroeck (Wtenbrouck)

Woodland Landscape with Salmacis and Hermaphroditus

Oil on panel. 47.7 x 69 cm.
Monogrammed and dated lower right: M WB 162(7).

This “Wooded Landscape with Salmacis and Hermaphroditus”, long housed in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, is one of Moyses van Uyttenbroeck's masterpieces. Its significance derives not only from the unique landscape composition, but also the unusual choice to depict the Ovidian fable of the demi-god Hermaphroditus and the nymph Salmacis' magical transformation into a hermaphroditic being.

In his “Metamorphoses”, Ovid recounts in graphic detail the story of the beautiful demi-god Hermaphroditus and the love-struck nymph Salmacis. Hermaphroditus was the son of Mercury and Venus and his handsome face combined elements of both male and female features. Whilst wandering the forest, he came upon a clear lake and decided to take a bath. The river nymph Salmacis discovered him there, fell in love, and pursued him. The young Hermaphroditus, inexperienced in matters of the heart, refused her. Salmacis pretended to withdraw but instead hid close by and waited for him to undress and enter the lake. Seeing him do this, Salmacis, mad with desire, undressed herself, chased him into the lake and embraced him. As he attempted to fight off her advances, Salmacis cried out to the gods pleading that she might be united with him forever. The gods fulfilled her wish and Salmacis and Hermaphroditus were merged together to form one being, neither fully male nor female, but both at once, as Ovid records.

It goes without saying that artists who were constantly looking at Ovid's “Metamorphoses” for new fables, devoted themselves to the story of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis. Pieter Lastman (whose work is now lost) and Jakob Pynas (ill. 1) both depicted this myth in painting. Van Uyttenbroeck, in close contact with the artists from Pieter Lastman's circle, and must have known their compositions. Unlike Jakob Pynas, who followed Italian pictorial tradition, Uyttenbroeck does not depict the moment in which Salmacis approaches Hermaphroditus, or even their fateful embrace, but rather shows the hapless demi-god stepping into the lake, unaware he is being watched by the disrobed Salmacis.

Moyses van Uyttenbroeck's placement of the figures and diagonal composition of the landscape means that the viewer follows Salmacis' line of sight when looking into the painting. The observer is thus led to identify with the nymph becoming - like Salmacis - a voyeur. Another unique compositional trick used by Uyttenbroeck is the way the landscape alludes to the future events of the story in the way in which the intertwining branches of the two trees in the centre anticipate the melding together of the protagonists' bodies. What other Dutch artists such as Jan Gossaert depict within a figural composition, Uyttenbroeck achieves within nature (illus. 2; Rotterdam, Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum).
Van Uyttenbroek thus imbues his landscape with a subtle ambiguity. The peaceful, pastoral scenery conceals a fantastic, enchanted world. After Hermaphroditus was transformed, he asked of the gods that anyone who bathed in that lake might share his fate and also be transformed; a wish that the spiteful gods fulfilled.

Moses van Uyttenbroeck's witty landscape composition telling the myth of the hermaphrodite was probably well understood by his patrons in The Hague, where the artist was active throughout his entire career. No doubt his audiences grasped the subtle nuances of the depiction, not least the Stadtholder Frederick Hendrick who was fond of mythological scenes and who later presented van Uyttenbroeck with numerous important commissions to paint in this genre.

Abb. 1/Ill. 1: Magdalena van de Passe nach Jacob Pynas, Salmakis und Hermaphroditos, Radierung / Magdalena van de Passe after Jacob Pynas, Salmacis and Hermaphroditos, Engraving © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Abb. 2/Ill. 2: Jan Gossaert, Salmakis und Hermaphroditos / Salmacis and Hermaphroditos © Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Provenance

Folgt

Literature

Folgt

Exhibitions

Folgt