The Capture of a Swarm of Bees in a Farmyard
Joannes Stradanus, called Giovanni Stradano (Flemish, 1523-1605)1578/1605
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Materials & printing
Archival matte paper, 189 g/m² (10.3 mil), sourced from Japan, printed with multicolor water-based inkjet so every brushstroke stays crisp. Framed prints arrive ready to hang in a .75″ ayous-wood frame with an acrylite front. Sized to standard frames by cropping, never stretching — at most about 3% comes off one edge, which isn’t noticeable on most pieces, and we only offer a size when it stays that small.
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Why is it this affordable?
A thin, flat margin on every piece — just enough to keep the store running. Most of what you pay is the print itself. We only sell sizes that reproduce at full quality, and we don’t mark up the large sizes the way most shops do.
About this work
Primarily active in the court of Florence and patronized by the Medici, Johannes Stradanus designed tapestries depicting hunting, agriculture, and animal husbandry. Stradanus’s familiarity with these subjects is underscored in The Capture of a Swarm of Bees, in which he used remarkable precision to describe the removal of a beehive in the central foreground. His mastery of detail is especially evident in the protective headgear and clothing of the figures. A print based on this sheet forms part of a series of over 100 subjects illustrating various types of hunting and farm work.
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink and blue watercolor, with opaque white watercolor, over black chalk, on cream laid paper, incised with a stylus for transfer, laid down on cream laid paper
- Original size
- Primary support: 19.6 × 28 cm (7 3/4 × 11 1/16 in.)
Museum record · 4 owners · 3 exhibitions
Provenance
- William A. Baillie-Grohman (1851–1921), London and Château de Matzen, Brixlegg, Tyrol; by descent to his wife, Mrs. Baillie-Grohman; sold, Sotheby's, London, May 14, 1923, lot 161, to Charles Francis George Richard Schwerdt (1862–1939), Old Alresford House, Hants, England; sold, Sotheby's, London, June 27, 1939, lot 1305.
- Marcel Jeanson, Paris; sold, Sotheby's, Monaco, Mar. 1, 1987, lot 518, to Katrin Bellinger Kunsthandel, Munich.
- Jacobus A. Klaver, acquired in 1988 (Schapelhouman); sold, Sotheby's, Amsterdam, May 10, 1994, lot 14.
- Sold, Sotheby's, New York, Jan. 23, 2001, to Dorothy Braude Edinburg, Brookline, Mass.; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2013.
Exhibitions
- Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Tekeningen van oude meesters: De verzameling Jacobus A. Klaver, Rijksmuseum, 8 May–25 July 1993.
- Art Institute of Chicago, The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence, Nov. 9, 2002–Feb. 2, 2003, hors cat. Art Institute of Chicago, Drawings in Dialogue: Old Master Through Modern, The Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection, June 3–July 30, 2006.
- Art Institute of Chicago, The Thrill of the Chase: Drawings for the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection, Mar. 15–June 15, 2014, no cat. The Art Institute of Chicago, "Rubens, Rembrandt, and Drawing in the Golden Age", September 28, 2019 - January 5, 2020, 199, 201, 316, cat. by Victoria Sancho Lobis, et. al.
