Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00011207Eight-Sided Cup (verso)
About the Artwork
This drawing depicts a castle in Southern Germany in the area around the Danube River known for its wooded and rocky heights and dramatic views. Wolfgang Huber's meandering, pen and ink lines describe the contours of the earth and the lushness of summer foliage in a horizontal layout that focuses on the middle distance with a barely recorded foreground. Huber may have made the drawing during a journey between Feldkirch and Vienna as he traveled along the Danube. In 1513 when this drawing was made, landscape was rarely depicted as a subject in and of itself, but artists in the Danube region such as Huber exhibited a profound sensitivity to nature. A drawing on the reverse of the sheet depicts a cup studded with gems and a poem written in a contemporary hand telling the mythological story of Actaeon's transformation into a stag when he intruded upon the goddess Diana and her nymphs bathing.
Inscriptions
verso: by artist?, across entire sheet, in black ink: [Ov]iduss Beschribet gar schon / Von einem Cunig Akteon / Wie er aing malß wolt jagen thain / jagt hin und da jm Holtze / fand er ein Göttin Rein vnd stoltze / Diana / die padet mit jeren junkfrauen / die pegünnt er an zu schowen / Daß es sie ser verdross / sy in mit Wasser pegoss / Zw [illegible] Hirschen un wissent / daß jm sin eigen Hünt zeryssen / Daß er sich zum Hirschen verkert / von seinen Hunden zerrissen zu d[illegible] / Erd [sideways]; upper center, in red chalk: [illegible, crossed out] / adltof.
Provenance
Arnold Otto Meyer, Hamburg; [his sale, C. G. Boerner, Leipzig, 19-20 March 1914, no. 300]; collection prince of Liechtenstein (according to cma files). Art market, 1930 (according to Halm 1930, 4); [Walter Feilchenfeldt, Zurich].
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Wolfgang Huber (Austrian, 1490–1553)
- Date
- 1513
- Medium
- charcoal
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 13.1 x 21.2 cm (5 3/16 x 8 3/8 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Accession no.
- 1951.277.b
More by Wolfgang Huber in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00011207
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