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Lot description
Despite the imposing presence of this painting since the 19th century, when it appeared in the Sedelmeyer Gallery in Paris attributed to Rembrandt, until its last sale in New York in 2010, no definitive attribution has been found. Prominently exhibited as a work by Ferdinand Bol at the 1939 World's Fair in New York and acquired a few years later by collector Frederick W. Schumacher, it was bequeathed by him to the Columbus Art Museum, Ohio. After Blankart described it in his catalogue raisonné on Ferdinand Bol as ‘an early painting or close to his style,’ it was sold from the Museum in 2010. Ferdinand Bol depicted the theme in another, later painting (now in the Cincinnati Art Museum) and in two drawings (Museum Boijmans van Beuningen and Princeton Art Museum). All three compositions differ significantly from one another. Fred G. Meijer has seen the original painting and also believes that it could be an early work by Bols or that it was created in his immediate circle. The subject of this painting comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The Roman God Vertumnus, disguised as the talkative old woman, attempts to seduce the reclusive woodland nymph Pomona. Netherlandish painters favored this classical story in the 1600s because of its moralizing lessons on the dangers of gullibility.