I finally checked the sales for April ( I know, I'm slacking...) and I was elated when I discovered a 17th century Dutch artist (my period of specialization in the history of art) at the top of the list! Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem, a Dutch Mannerist painter from Haarlem, sold his allegorical painting, "Hercules and Achelous" for roughly 8.1 M USD at Christie's in New York. The top ten auction prices for the month were much lower in comparison to other months (when there have been Francis Bacon paintings selling for 50 M each!). April's top 10 totaled 56.1 M USD.
Cornelis is, in my opinion, a pretty awesome painter. He's a forerunner of the Haarlem school, from where one of my most FAVORITE painters - Frans Hals- also comes. Cornelis is known for painting huge, naked, contorted bodies - limbs reach, grasp, flail and torsos stretch and twist all over the place. It's very active, dynamic and emotional. He's got work all over the world, because he is so fucking cool. Some of the more famous places with his paintings: the Frans Hals Museum, the Rijks (he could pop up on the widget at any moment...oh the suspense!), the Louvre and the Hermitage.
Just as I love the painter, I am also extra-excited by the subject matter of the scene, as I just re-read Ovid's Metamorphoses from which this scene portrayed by Cornelis comes. It's the story explaining the mythological origins of the horn of plenty, or cornucopia AND some of the original inspiration for the sport of bullfighting. A summary of what is going on here: Hercules is fighting with the river god Achelous for the hand of the nymph Deianeira, daughter of a king of Calydon. Since Hercules is a badass, and the pussy river god knew he was no match for the demigod, his only possible advantage over Hercules was his ability to change forms. So, Achelous turned himself into a bull with hopes he could defeat Hercules. With no avail, mighty Hercules used all of his strength to wrestle Achelous to the ground, where he defeated him by ripping off one of his horns. Hercules won the nymph Deineira, who he presumably fucked (nymph=nympho, notorious in classical mythology for their passionate love affairs with gods and mortals). Her posse, the Naiads (nymphs of freshwater) took from Hercules the horn of the bull-form of Achelous, and filled it with fruit and flowers creating the first cornucopia.
In the painting, Hercules is of course the overpowering human, Achelous the bull who takes up the majority of the canvas (which is a criticism of Cornelis' composition). In the background to the right of the fight scene, you see the group of pale nymphs, holding the fruit and flowers they will use to fill Achelous' horn and foreshadowing the outcome of the battle taking place in the foreground.
Think of the Roman poet Ovid as roughly contemporary to Jesus. He wrote Metamorphoses in 8 AD. His account of Hercules and Achelous was certainly one of the best-known and most popular stories about bull fighting, but it's not the first time classical history that someone has recorded a human instigating conflict with a bull. In the 15th century BC the Mycenaeans on mainland Greece (and it's believed that people in the fertile crescent even before their time) incorporated the bull into many of their religious practices, which involved doing some really stupid shit, like jumping over bulls. We know this from wall paintings. Nevertheless, when Ovid writes about badass Hercules conquering the bull to get some ass from a sexy river nymph, it became very cool and impressive to piss off a large bovine, then overpower it.
I would argue that this concept of domination holds true to this day. People still fight bulls in Europe and Mexico, and cowboys ride them all over the United States. You know what else? Matadors and Cowboys are still glamorized and considered by many women to be very sexy, just for what they do. If I had more time, I would develop a ridiculous argument connecting Ovid's Metamorphoses to assless chaps. But, that is neither here nor there today.
A final note on the more recent provenance of this painting: The guy who originally owned it was a German living in east Berlin before the fall of Communism. Apparently, he "incorrectly filed taxes", so the Stasi police took this painting from him and gave it to the Bode Museum in Berlin. It was JUST NOW returned to him, and he made the decision to sell it through Christie's. It's rumored that Jeff Koons, the neo-pop artist who was married to that freak-nasty Italian porn star, was the buyer. I am only slightly obsessed with provenance, if you didn't know. Also, I hate communists and socialists.
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