Page 71 - Gallery 19C Nazarenes Catalogues

2 7 PROVENANCE EXHIBITED LITERATURE
Joseph Anton Koch Private collection, England Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Lutterotti 1940, no. G 122, 229
AUSTRIAN, 1768–1839 Private collection Museum, Zeitgeist: Art from Lutterotti 1985, no. G 90a, 305, ill.
Switzerland, 1852
no. 66, 186
Germanic World 1800–1900,
LANDSCAPE WITH APOLLO AMONG THE SHEPHERDS, 1836 Sale, Grisebach, Berlin, 10 February–17 May 2015, no. 327.
signed with monogram J.K. (lower left on stone) 28 May 2014, lot 109
oil on canvas Private Collection, California
31 ¹/₄ by 47 ¹/₄ in. (79.5 by 120 cm) (acquired at the above sale)

1832 was a good year for Joseph Anton Koch (1768–1839). Late that over and, equally mesmerized, put down their own instruments in a gesture then and now, sense a powerful element of anti-aesthetic sublimity in ¹ Reiter 2014, 211
year he had received a commission for seven historical-mythological of defeat. The most prominent of them, goat-legged, with horns and a Koch’s composition: Marsyas emerges as the modern artist’s alter ego, a ² Robin Hard. “Apollo, Artemis, and Athena.” In The Routledge Handbook of
scenes from Hermann Härtel (1803–1875), heir to the important music rugged face is Pan, as Koch himself suggested in a brief aside to the Danish potent reminder that his flagrant corporeality, like our entanglement in the Greek Mythology, ed. Robin Hard. Routledge Handbooks Online (3 Dec 2019).
publishing house Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig. They were intended for sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, who acquired the composition’s first version material, can no longer be sublimated. This seems a quite apt reading for ³ Holst 1989, 336.
Härtel’s “Roman Villa,” a kind of contemporary Villa Farnesina that he when the paint was hardly dry. But most have seen in the figure another Koch’s programmatic juxtaposition of the Apollinian and the Dionysian. ⁴ https://kataloget.thorvaldsensmuseum.dk/en/B125.
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had constructed in the heart of his hometown between 1832 and 1834. of Apollo’s unfortunate challenger, the satyr Marsyas, who had taught
Free to choose his subject matter, Koch picked themes conducive to himself how to play the traditional aulos, that double flute he had found Regardless of the staffage’s interpretation, the landscape itself is of ⁵ Robin Hard. “The Younger Olympian Gods and Goddesses.”
unalloyed beauty. Koch centered the scenery on La Serpentara, a small
In The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology, ed. Robin Hard.
his interest in landscape: Apollo among the Shepherds, The Abduction of Hylas, discarded by its divine inventor, Athena. Is he, we might wonder, the other forest of holm oaks above the Italian town of Olevano. The spot, which Routledge Handbooks Online.
Diana and Actaeon, Silenus and His Followers, the Death of Orpheus, Nessus’s Rape of satyr, pointing toward the divine musician on the other side of the brook? offers an impressive view over the hilly landscape, had been Koch’s
Deianira, and Chiron Teaching Achilles to Play the Lyre. Unfortunately, the fresco Be that as it may, both satyrs stare at the God with undisguised ⁶ Pan, too, lost, but with much less severe consequences.
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project never progressed beyond its initial stage, and Koch decided to admiration. Or do they? artistic discovery, and its picturesque interplay of vegetation, rocks and ⁷ Holst 1989, 336.
th
execute his design in oil instead. In 1833/34, he finished the first version light would attract poets and artists throughout the 19 century. When ⁸ www.kunsthalle-karlsruhe.de/kunstreise-um-die-welt-der-pflanzen/
of Apollo among the Shepherds. It was an immediate success. Peter The composition has often been interpreted in this way, with Apollo shown the grove was to be cut down in 1873, it was not surprising indeed that edmund-friedrich-kanoldt-aus-der-serpentara-bei-olevano/
Cornelius (1783–1867), one of the most celebrated figureheads of the as the unquestioned victor of a musical challenge. After all, everyone is another German artist, Edmund Friedrich Kanoldt (1845–1904), launched ⁹ Holst 1989, 336-338.
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Nazarene movement and by then director of the influential Munich looking in his direction, and even we, the viewer, are first drawn to his a successful fundraising campaign for its preservation. But Koch himself
Academy of the Fine Arts, even considered it among Koch’s best works. presence. “In making music, they both represent art, but the satyr Marsyas was interested in more than merely depicting some enchanting vedute.
… represents the instinctive, the wild, the unconventional, whereas Apollo He played freely with the elements gleaned from his intense studies of
The scene unites two separate episodes of the Apollo myth, linked by their stands for the more rational, the balanced, the idealizing. It is typical of the Campagna Romana and the Alban hills, forging from them “his own
mutual emphasis on music and cultivation. On the left we see Apollo, here the neo-classical Koch,” Christian von Holst observes, “that he should melody of language and image.” ⁹ The result was a symphony of colors
still a soft and beautiful youth, tending to the herds of King Admetos, the focus on a mythological scene in which reason wins over emotion, but structured by an exceedingly skilled draftsmanship, whose ultimate
ruler of Pherae in Thessaly. On the other side, we find a satyr who is about in such a way that the contrast between the two does not affect the sentiment, however, went beyond a quest for formal beauty. A deeply
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to challenge the Olympian to a musical contest (or maybe, this has already fundamental harmony of the Arcadian landscape.” This is one possible progressive thinker, his association with this particular geography, like with
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happened?). Be this as it may, Apollo’s servitude to a mortal master was the reading; yet it seems equally likely that we witness the moment just before the Alps before, were as emphatically personal as they were profoundly
punishment inflicted upon him by his father, the mighty Zeus, for having Pan or Marsyas (or both?), is reckless enough to challenge the immortal political. Melodic yet erudite, emotional yet rational, the scenery ultimately
killed the Cyclopes, the makers of his thunderbolts. Admetos, however, opponent. Apollo agreed, but only under the condition that the victor reveals itself as a testimony to Koch’s revolutionary ideals, to his never-
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treated the young God well; Apollo repaid the king’s kindness manifold, not could do as he wished with the loser. In Marsyas’s case, this would lead to ending advocacy for personal freedom and human self-fulfillment.
least by helping him to win his chosen bride, Alcestis, and making all the sadistic bloodshed. Winning by trickery, the God brutally murdered his
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king’s cows have twins. In this scene, however, Apollo is shown as the rival, suspending Marsyas from a pine-tree and then flaying him alive.
harbinger of education, peace and prosperity. Even the ever so rowdy The memory of this vicious act lurks beneath the landscape’s serene
he-goats at the river bed have been appeased by the sweet sound of his lyre. surface, especially for those contemporary viewers familiar, like the artist,
On the other side of the brook, a group of satyrs and their entourage look with Karl Philipp Moritz’s influential Götterlehre of 1790. Those viewers,
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