The Abduction of Europa

1. Presumably John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, died 1722 [it is presumed that he was the purchaser of the Blenheim set of 120 copies made by Teniers as models for engravings forming part of a larger group of small copies after paintings in the collection of Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm]; his daughter, Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, certainly by 1728, when the copies were seen by Pierre Jacques Fougeroux [see Methuen-Campbell, 2006, p. 61]; by descent in the collection of the dukes of Marlborough to George Charles Spencer-Churchill, 8th Duke of Marlborough, sold, Christie’s, London, July 26, 1886, no. 84 to Thomas Agnew & Sons for £55 13s. [according to annotated catalogue at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorisch Documentatie, The Hague]; sold by Agnew’s to Charles Hutchinson, Chicago, September 24, 1886, died October 7, 1924 [copy of receipt in curatorial file]; his widow Frances Kinsley Hutchinson, died 1936; bequeathed to the Art Institute in 1936.

Recorded by Art Institute of Chicago.

• Art Institute of Chicago, Recent Accessions to the Permanent Collections of the Art Institute, December 22 – January 24, 1937, no cat.
• Florence, Italy, Galleria degli Uffizi, Il Mito di Europa: da fanciulla rapita a continente, June 11, 2002 – January 6, 2003, no. 18.

• George Scharf, Catalogue Raisonné; or, A List of the Pictures in the Private Apartments of Blenheim Palace; with Occasional Remarks and Illustrative Notes (London, 1862), vol. II, p. 148, no. 9.
• Charles Davis, A Collection of One Hundred and Twenty Paintings by David Teniers (From Blenheim Palace): The Property of His Grace the Duke of Marlborough. On Exhibition at Mr. Davis’s Galleries (London, 1884), p. 7, no. 9.
• Art Institute of Chicago, Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago: Report for the Year Nineteen Hundred Thirty-Six (Chicago, 1937), p. 40.
• George Vertue, “Notebooks,” The Volume of the Walpole Society 26 (1937-1938), p. 135.
• William Suida, “Forgotten Splendor in Titian’s Treasury,” Art in America 29 (1941), pp. 9, ill., 13.
• George Martin Richter, “Lost and Rediscovered Works by Giorgione: Part II,” Art in America 30 (1942), pp. 215, ill., 217-218.
• Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 445.
• Terisio Pignatti, Giorgione (Milano, 1978), pp. 89, ill., 157-158.
• Barbara Mundt, “Große Bild-Erfindungen: Beispiele künstlerischer Interpretation des Europa-Themas in der Malerei des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts,“ in Die Verführung der Europa, ed. Barbara Mundt (Franfurt-am-Main, 1988), pp. 117-118, ill., 278.
• Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: Peintre de la “Brièveté Poétique,” Catalogue Raisonné, trans. Bernard Turle (Paris, 1996), pp. 79, 237, 240, ill., 315-316, ill.
• Jacques Foucart, “Quelques exemples de représentations de l’enlèvement d’Europe chez les maîtres nordiques au XVIIe siècle,” in D’Europe à l’Europe, vol. I, Le mythe d’Europe dans l’art et la culture de l’antiquité au XVIIIe siècle, eds. Rémy Poignault and Odile Wattel-de Croizant (Tours, 1998), p. 250.
• Peter H. Gommers, Europe – What’s in a Name (Leuven, 2001), p. 117, ill.

The Guardhouse

Art Institute of Chicago

Abraham's Sacrifice of Isaac

Art Institute of Chicago

The Abduction of Europa

Art Institute of Chicago

The Flageolet Player

Art Institute of Chicago

Circle Dance

Art Institute of Chicago

Scene of Witchcraft and Devil Worship

Art Institute of Chicago

Study for Country Festival near Antwerp

Art Institute of Chicago

Village Festival

Art Institute of Chicago

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