Art Institute of ChicagoPublic domain

Venus and Mars with Cupid and the Three Graces in a Landscape

Domenico Tintoretto · 1585–95

Provenance

Ownership history

Don Gaspar Méndez de Haro y Guzmán, Marqués del Carpio y Helice and viceroy of Naples (died 1687), by 1682/3 [his monogram, DGH / 4,67 / 1406, was painted on the reverse of the old lining canvas; the painting is no. 465 [sic] in the 1682/83 inventory of the Carpio collection, Rome, as “Un quadro che rappresenta Venere sopra un Letto, che vede Amore che ha gl’ occhi bendati, e da Lontano Le tre Gratie nude di mano di Domenicao Tintoretto”, and no. 1406 in the 1687 inventory of the same collection, taken in Naples, see Burke and Cherry 1997]; probably by descent to the Alba collection through Don Gaspar’s daughter, Doña Catalina, who in 1688 married the tenth Duke of Alba [the painting is not included in the inventories of the Alba Collection, which are incomplete; for these inventories see A. M. de Barcia, Catálogo de la colección…del…Duque de Berwick y de Alba (Madrid, 1911)]. Price collection, London, nineteenth or early twentieth century, as Jacopo Tintoretto [reference appears on the mount of a photograph of the painting in the Witt Library in London; this location and the following does not necessarily precede its presence in the H. M. Clark collection]. Dowdeswell and Dowdeswell, London, as Jacopo Tintoretto [according to the Witt Library mount cited above]. H. M. Clark, London, as Jacopo Tintoretto [according to registrar’s records]. D. Heinemann, Munich; sold by Heinemann to Charles H. Worcester, 1928, as Jacopo Tintoretto [according to registrar’s records]; Charles H. Worcester, Chicago, 1928–29; on loan to the Art Institute from 1928; given to the Art Institute, 1929.

Recorded by Art Institute of Chicago.

Exhibitions

Exhibition history

Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress, June 1–November 1, 1933, no. 137, as by Jacopo Tintoretto.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress, June 1–November 1, 1934, no. 55, as by Jacopo Tintoretto.
New York, Durlacher Brothers, A Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Jacopo Robusti, il Tintoretto, 1519–1594, February 20–March 18, 1939, no. 9, as by Jacopo Tintoretto.
New York, M. Knoedler and Co., Classics of the Nude, April 10–29, 1939, no. 9, as by Jacopo Tintoretto.
Art Institute of Chicago, Masterpiece of the Month, May 1941, no cat., as by Jacopo Tintoretto.
Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, Opening Exhibition, April 8–June 3, 1951, no cat. no., as by Jacopo Tintoretto.
Chattanooga Art Association, Inc., Tennessee, Opening Exhibition of Hunter Gallery of Art, 1952, no cat.
Urbana, University of Illinois, Midwest Museum Loan Exhibition, 1955, no cat.
Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, England’s World of 1607, 1957, no cat.
Art Institute of Chicago, New Light on Old Masters: Early Italian Painting in the Art Institute of Chicago, May 29–July 31, 1993, no cat.

Literature

Published references

Art News 27, 13 (1928), p. 24, ill.
Daniel Catton Rich, “Mars and Venus of Tintoretto,” Bulletin of The Art Institute of Chicago 22 (1928), pp. 102–03, cover ill., detail ill.
Daniel Catton Rich, “Chicago Given Worcester Art,” Art News 28, 22 (1930), p. 9.
Daniel Catton Rich, “The Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Worcester Gift,” Bulletin of The Art Institute of Chicago 24 (1930), p. 30.
Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), pl. CCCCIX.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection (Chicago, 1932), pp. 4, 173, ill.
Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance (Oxford, 1932), p. 558
A. L. M[ayer], “Italienische Bilder in Amerika,” Pantheon 10 (1932), p. 218.
Daniel Catton Rich, “Die Ausstellung ‘Fünf Jahrhunderte der Frühmalerei’ in Chicago,” Pantheon 12 (1933), p. 381.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Brief Illustrated Guide to the Collections (Chicago, 1935), p. 21, detail ill.
Bernard Berenson, Pitture italiane del Rinascimento (Milan, 1936), p. 480.
Daniel Catton Rich, Catalogue of the Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection of Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings (Chicago, 1938), p. 15, no. 11, pl. X.

Comparables