The Sibyl

The Sibyl

The Sibyl

Artist:Willem Drost (Dutch, Amsterdam 1633–1659 Venice)
Date:ca. 1654
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:38 1/2 x 30 3/4 in. (97.8 x 78.1 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Theodore M. Davis Collection, Bequest of Theodore M. Davis, 1915

Although once a well-known Rembrandt, there is now a strong consensus that this canvas was painted about 1654–55 by his pupil, Willem Drost (1633–1659). The female type, the drawing of facial features, and the painterly execution of the costume are characteristic of Drost. The subject (which is rare in Northern Europe) and composition appear to have been inspired by a recent Italian example such as Domenichino's Cumaean Sibyl of 1616–17 in the Galleria Borghese, Rome. Drost worked in Italy from 1655 until his early death.

Catalogue Entry
Drost's authorship of this picture has been supported by most specialists since 1923, and may be considered as beyond reasonable doubt. Comparisons with other works by the young artist suggest a date of about 1654, when he was still in Amsterdam and very much under the influence of Rembrandt.

The painter's technique was greatly clarified by conservation carried out in 1995 by Hubert von Sonnenburg, in preparation for the exhibition "Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." As he reported in the catalogue, the present composition was painted over another one (evidently with a similar figure) by turning the canvas upside down, applying a light reddish brown priming, and then laying in extensive areas of shadow. More opaque paints were scumbled over this dark but translucent layer to describe drapery and other forms. The face was rather softly modeled in warm ocherous tones, and thick impasto was used in the drapery on the shoulder and in highlights on the turban and along the neckline. In the past, the assertiveness of these highlights and of the impasto cloak was considered as typical of the late Rembrandt, as alien to Drost, or as suggestive of later intervention, but technical examination reveals that these effects were toned down considerably by scumbling and glazes when the artist completed the picture. The apparent inconsistencies of execution, and the soft or painterly touch that some critics have seen as differing from Drost's style of about 1654, are largely the result of the artist's working in a more superficial manner than usual because of the preexisting design, and of later abrasion and other damage. Before 1995, the effects of past cleanings and old restorations played an inscrutable part in the responses of connoisseurs.

Despite these considerations, the manner of execution found in The Met's picture has often reminded scholars of other paintings by or attributed to Drost, in particular the Young Woman in a Brocade Gown of about 1654 (Wallace Collection, London). Furthermore, the facial type in that painting, in The Sibyl, and in the original version of the Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden) could be described as idealizations or variations of the features seen in the Portrait of a Woman (the Painter's Fiancée?), dated 1653 (Museum Bredius, The Hague), and in the Bathsheba with King David's Letter, dated 1654 (Musée du Louvre, Paris). Whether or not that model is the artist's fiancée or wife (for further discussion, see Portrait of a Man (Self-Portrait?), 41.116.2), the transformations of the figure type are comparable to those found in the favorite female types of Rubens, Rembrandt, and other artists of the period.

The picture has been known as The Sibyl since its earliest trace. Presumably, the title was chosen on analogy with the similarly posed and comparably dressed figure in Domenichino's celebrated Cumaean Sibyl of about 1616–17 (Galleria Borghese, Rome). It has been plausibly suggested (Bikker 2005) that one of the many painted copies of that picture (which was not engraved until the eighteenth century) was seen by Drost in the Netherlands. The possibility of another Italian source cannot be excluded, since Orazio Gentileschi, Guercino, and other cisalpine painters treated the subject. Netherlandish precedents include Jan van Eyck's
Cumaean Sibyl, on the exterior of the Ghent Altarpiece, and Maarten van Heemskerck's Erythraean Sibyl (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), which was painted in 1564 on the wing of a private triptych. Ten full-length sibyls (each with a book), engraved by Philips Galle after Anthonie Blocklandt, were published in Antwerp in 1575, and are inscribed with verses by Philip II's librarian, Benito Arias Montano (1527–1598).
In contrast to these earlier northern examples, where each sibyl's foretelling of the coming of Christ is either obvious from the pictorial context or conveyed by an inscription, Drost appears to have chosen the subject (as in his erotic Bathsheba) as a mere pretext for the image of an exotic type.

[2016; adapted from Liedtke 2007]

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