Golden Age
Jan Brueghel the Younger and Circle of Peter PaulRubens(Antwerp 1601 – 1678 Antwerp)

ca. 1625
oil on panel
38 x 59.2 cm
JB-100How to cite
Rahusen, Henriette. “Golden Age” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/ (archived December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Golden Age
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In an idyllic scene at the edge of a forest, a satyr teasingly backs away from a nymph

Comparative Figures

who reaches for the grapes in his hands. Two small boys in the center of the triangularcomposition romp blithely with three majestic leopards. Resting an arm on the neckof one of the beasts, the boy at the right gestures toward the nymph while the second
boy—echoing the satyr’s gesture—teases the central leopard with another bunch ofgrapes. The playful interactions between the mythological figures, the children, andthe leopards project a world of harmonious coexistence evocative of the mythologicalGolden Age. Popularized in western Europe by Ovid’s Metamorphoses (written in 7A.D.), the Golden Age was celebrated for being the only one of mankind’s four ages
in which nature and reason were in perfect harmony and humans were inherently
good: “The Golden Age was first; when Man, yet new, no rule but uncorrupted
Reason knew: And, with a native bent, did good pursue. Unforc’d by punishment, unaw’d by fear.”[1]Ovid’s Metamorphoses provided Dutch and Flemish artists with an almost endlesssource of subjects for history paintings, but none more than Peter Paul Rubens

Fig 1. After Maarten de Vos, Pan etSyrinx, 1787, etching and engraving,
41.6 x 29.9 cm, The British Museum,inv. 1855,0609.490, © Trustees of theBritish Museum(1577–1640). Combining the lives of gods, goddesses, and mythological creatureswith the observed natural world around him, Rubens’s realistic depictions of animals
brought Greek mythology into a naturalistic setting that the viewer could understand.
Rubens, largely inspired by Ovid, painted various images of the Golden Age,
including Nymph and Satyr with Leopards, ca. 1618, a large canvas that he sold to Sir
Dudley Carleton as part of an exchange for the latter’s collection of antiquities.[2] The
identification of this composition as an allegory of the Golden Age was already notedin 1793, when Rubens’s original painting—or another version of it—was in the[3]collection of the Duc d’Orleans (fig 1).

The Leiden Collection panel is a reduced copy of that composition. Rubens’sFig 2. Jan Brueghel the Elder, Sight
and Smell (detail), ca. 1620, oil oncanvas, 176 x 264 cm, Museo delPrado, Madrid, inv. P01403

composition is seen hanging on a wall in Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Allegory of Sight
and Smell, ca. 1620, in the Prado (fig 2). The Prado work indicates that Rubens’scomposition had more foliage and a greater expanse of sky above the satyr’s headthan the copy in the Leiden Collection, and a technical examination has revealed thatthe latter panel has been trimmed at the top.[4]The Leiden Collection painting is the result of collaboration between at least twoartists. The three stunningly lifelike leopards and the landscape may well be the workof Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601–78). The leopards are based on models found in
the paintings of his father Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625), which, in turn, wereFig 3. Jan Brueghel the Elder andPeter Paul Rubens, The Garden ofEden with the Fall of Man, ca. 1617,
oil on panel, 74.3 x 114.7 cm, Royal
Pictures Gallery Mauritshuis, TheHague, inv. 253

based on animal studies by Rubens. The central leopard, for example, is found in thefamous Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man, ca. 1615, which Jan the Elder painted
in collaboration with Rubens (fig 3). The head-butting leopard on the left appears in© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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Jan the Elder’s vivid depiction of The Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark, 1613 (fig4). The nymph, satyr, and the two boys were executed by a different hand,presumably someone trained in Rubens’s workshop. When this painting entered theLeiden Collection in 2005, these figures were attributed to Jan Boeckhorst(1604–68), but his figures have a very different character than those in this work.[5]The broadly executed landscape may have been painted by an entirely different artist.
Both Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder had large workshops that reproduced
replicas of the masters’ works, and identifying individual hands in such paintings has

Fig 4. Jan Brueghel the Elder, The
Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark,
1613, oil on panel, 54.61 x 83.82 cm,The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los
Angeles, inv. 92.PB.82

proven to be extremely difficult.

- Henriette Rahusen, 2017

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Golden Age
Page 4 of 6Endnotes
1. Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Sir Samuel Garth et al. (London, 1717), Book 1: 89–93 and 107–16. Thetree against which the satyr is pressed may stand for the tree of Jove, which yielded its acorns in an eraof unlimited plenty: “The teeming Earth, yet guiltless of the plough / And unprovok’d, did fruitful storesallow: / Content with food, which Nature freely bred / On wildings and on strawberries [mankind] fed; /Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest / And falling acorns furnish’d out a feast!”
2. In 1618, Rubens sent Carleton a list of the paintings available in his studio, including this description of
the nine-by-eleven-foot composition: “Leopards done from nature, with satyrs and nymphs, original by
my hand except a beautiful landscape done by the hand of a capable specialist in this field.” See Julius S.
Held. “Rubens’s Leopards—A Milestone in the Portrayal of Wild Animals,” M: Quarterly Review of theMontreal Museum of Fine Arts 7, no. 3 (1975): 5. When planned for exhibition at the 1953 Winter
Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Leiden Collection painting was attributed toPeter Paul Rubens. On 1 June 1990, it was sold at Sotheby’s New York as a work by Jan Brueghel theElder.
3. An exhibition catalogue of the Duc d’Orleans’s collection described Rubens’s composition as“symbolical of the Golden Age.” The Orleans Gallery, now exhibiting, at the Great Rooms, late the Royal
Academy, No. 125, Pall Mall, April 1793 (London, 1793), 18. The Orleans composition was at that point
attributed to Antwerp artist Martin de Vos (1532–1603). Quoted Julius S. Held. “Rubens’s Leopards—AMilestone in the Portrayal of Wild Animals” in M: Quarterly Review of the Montreal Museum of Fine
Arts 7, no. 3 (1975): 7 n. 6.
The description of the Orleans Collection is taken from the curator’s comments on the British Museum
website for inv. 1837,0408.317: “From ‘Galerie du Palais Royal,’ a set reproducing 354 works from thecollection of the Duke of Orléans, published by Jacques Couché . . . from 1786 to 1808. The plates wereissued by series of 6, every 3 months, and each of them was accompanied by a text, engraved on thesame plate as the reproduction; the first six plates were published on 15 February 1786 and advertised in‘Affiches, Annonce et Avis divers,’ 25 February. . . . [The Galerie du Palais Royal] is also sometimes
referred to as ‘Galerie du Palais d’Orléans,’ or ‘Galerie du Duc d’Orléans.’”
4. Apart from this panel, several other workshop copies of the composition exist in a range of sizes.
5. Auction catalogue, Koller Zurich, 21 September 2005, Sale A134, Lot 3042, with notes by Dr. Klaus
Ertz, who dated the painting ca. 1626 and assigned authorship of the figures to Boeckhorst.

Provenance
The Honorable Mrs. Saumarez, Coddenham, Suffolk, by 1953, as by Peter Paul Rubens.[1]© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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(Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 1 June 1990, as by Jan Brueghel the Younger).
Private collection (sale, Koller, Zurich, 21 September 2005, no. 3042, as by Jan Brueghel the Younger
and Jan Boeckhorst [Salomon Lilian B. V., Amsterdam, 2005]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2005.

Provenance Notes

1. This provenance is based on a label affixed to the verso of the panel: “Royal Academy of Art WinterExhibition, 1953. Flemish Pictures. / Artist: Attrib. Rubens / Title: The Golden Age / Name andAddress of Owner: The Hon. Mrs. Saumarez, Shrubland Park, Codenham, Suffolk.” Sincere thanks toAndrew Potter, research assistant at the Royal Academy Library, who communicated to Nicole Cook,curatorial assistant at the Leiden Collection, on 24 July 2014 that while records indicate that the painting
was originally intended to be shown in the 1953 Winter Exhibition, it was ultimately not included due todiscrepancies over its transport.

Versions
Versions and Copies
1. After Peter Paul Rubens, The Leopards, oil on canvas, 255 x 317 cm, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts,inv. no. 1975.15, as by Rubens until 1992.

2. After Peter Paul Rubens, Nymph, Satyr, Two Children, and Playful Leopards in a Landscape, oil onpanel, 70 x 53 cm, Musée Jeanne-d’Aboville, La Fère, previously as by Maerten de Vos.

3. After Peter Paul Rubens, Leopards in a Landscape with a Nymph, a Satyr, and Two Putti, oil on linen,
168.6 x 209.6 cm, current whereabouts unknown; sale, London, Christie’s, 4 July 1991, no. 508.

4. After Peter Paul Rubens, Leopards with a Satyr and Nymph, oil on panel, 48.7 x 64.2 cm, current
whereabouts unknown; sale, New York, Christie’s, 26 February 1997, no. 77.

5. Circle of Peter Paul Rubens, Eine Nymph emit Satyr, zwei Kindern und leoparden in einer bewaldeten
Flussandschaft, oil on wood, 48 x 64 cm, current whereabouts unknown; sale, Vienna, Dorotheum, 29
September 2004, no. 148.

6. Follower of Peter Paul Rubens, Leopards avec satyre et nymphe, tempera on vellum paid on panel, 21 x
27.5 cm, current whereabouts unknown; sale, Paris, Ferri, 15 June 2007, no. 23.

Related Drawings and Prints© 2024 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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1. Wenceslaus Hollar (1607–77), Three Leopards and Two Boys, ca. 1640s, partial copy after The Leopards
by Rubens, etching, 14 x 21 cm, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1920,
20.81.3.327.

2. Antoine Borel (1743–1810), copy after The Leopards by Rubens, ca. 1787, drawing, dimensions
unknown, Paris, The Jacques Doucet Literary Library.

3. Charles-Nicolas Varin (1741–1812), copy after design by Antoine Borel, mistakenly inscribed as “Panet Syrinx” after a painting by Martin de Vos, 1787, etching and engraving, 41.6 x 29.9 cm, London,British Museum, inv. no. 1855,0609.490. From Galerie du Palais Royal: gravée d’après les tableaux desdifferentes ecoles qui la composent: avec un abrégé de la vie des peintres & une description historique dechaque tableau par M.r l’Abbé de Fontenai…, 3 vols. (Paris, 1786–1808).

Technical Summary
The support, a single, rectangular plank of horizontally grained oak, has bevels on all four sides.[1] The upper
bevel is narrower than the others, and the satyr’s head appears to have been cropped, which suggests theupper panel edge may have been trimmed. The panel is unthinned and uncradled, and has no machine toolmarks. Triangular wood inserts have been added to the lower left and upper left and right corners, and anarrow shim has been glued to the upper edge. The panel has a paper label and a handwritten inscription, but
no wax collection seals, import stamps, stencils or panel maker’s marks.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied with parallel, diagonally oriented brushstrokes andextends onto the lower panel edge. The paint has been applied smoothly and opaquely. In the current format,
the satyr’s head appears to be cropped by ca. 1 cm.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers. Minor
compositional changes noted in the images and X-radiograph include additional folds that originally defined
the nymph’s drapery.
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition in 2005 and remains in a goodstate of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on visual examination only.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection