Lost in the war - now back in the Kunstgewerbemuseum: Permoser's ivory group "Hercules and Omphale"
Press release from 07/31/2007
The twenty-two centimetre high group of figures "Hercules and Omphale", carved out of ivory by the Baroque sculptor Balthasar Permoser around 1700, returned to its original place in the Berlin Museum of Decorative Arts after decades of loss. The work had initially come to the Berlin Kunstkammer in 1873 with the donation of the rentier Mossner. After the Kunstkammer was soon dissolved, it was integrated into the Kunstgewerbemuseum, which was housed in the Berlin Palace from 1921. The work was thought to have been lost during the war until 2005, when it surfaced on the art market and has now been returned to the Berlin Museum of Decorative Arts through the auction house Sotheby's in New York. Today, after thorough cleaning and examination, it is being presented to the public for the first time and is now on permanent display in the Museum of Decorative Arts at the Kulturforum. The museum is the oldest of its kind in Germany. Despite immense losses due to the war, it has one of the most important collections of European arts and crafts from the Middle Ages to the present day. In addition to the building at the Kulturforum, it has a second location in Köpenick Palace.
Loss and recovery
In 1943, the ivory group registered with the inventory number K 8718 was initially moved to Oegeln Castle near Beeskow (Brandenburg) together with other works to protect it from war damage. This is documented by packing lists with individual item details. During onward transport in March 1945 to Arolsen Castle (Hesse), the work was apparently lost near Melsungen (Hesse), where in April 1945 American troops seized two railway wagons, some of which had already been robbed, containing works of art that had been relocated from the Berlin museums. This is confirmed - especially for the box with the Permoser group - by the "Protocol of the Melsungen Transport" dated 10 June 1958, which is held in the Central Archive of the National Museums in Berlin.
Since then, the work had been considered lost and had been published as such in relevant literature. After the work was offered to Sotheby's auction house for auction by a private party, their careful provenance research revealed that it had come from the Berlin collection. In March 2005, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin received initial information and photographs from New York. From the outset, the consignor expressed his willingness to return the piece against payment of a finder's fee if the Berlin provenance could be proven. Prior to this, detailed comparisons with historical photographs and authentication by an expert from the Berlin museum had established the identity beyond doubt. According to the seller, who wishes to remain anonymous, he had purchased the work a few years earlier from a small auction house in California, unaware of the piece's provenance. No further clues as to where it had been in the previous decades could be found.
The sculpture was one of the many works lost by Berlin's museums. Even decades after the Second World War, the scale of the loss is immense, both in terms of the number and significance of the works. The majority of them concern the cultural assets that were transferred to the former Soviet Union, which were not included in the sensational restitution campaign in the 1950s to the former GDR, or those cultural assets that were transferred by German authorities to Eastern European countries before the end of the war. Individual works, such as the one that has now been recovered, occasionally turn up on the art market and the Foundation then makes every effort to recover the work. In the current case, it is also thanks to the exemplary attitude of the auction house that this came to such a happy end. Similarly pleasing results have been achieved in recent years with regard to two Menzel gouaches from the Kupferstichkabinett and a Florentine Mannerist portrait of a lady from the Gemäldegalerie.
Balthasar Permoser (1651-1732) and his work
Alongside Andreas Schlüter, the artist is considered the most important German sculptor of the Baroque period. After working in Italy for fifteen years, he was appointed court sculptor in Dresden in 1689. There, between 1711 and 1719, he worked in congenial collaboration with Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann on the construction of the Dresden Zwinger, where a unique fusion of architecture and sculpture emerged as the pinnacle of his work. Permoser also created important sculptures outside Dresden, such as the herms depicting the seasons for Portal IV of the Berlin Palace (now on the former State Council building). Alongside monumental sculptures, Permoser's oeuvre includes numerous miniature, finely crafted cabinet pieces made of wood and ivory, some of which were created in collaboration with the Saxon court jeweller Johann Melchior Dinglinger.
The ivory groups "Hercules and Omphale", which have survived in several versions, occupy a special place in his oeuvre. Four very similar versions are known, but they differ in details and also in their artistic status. Two of the groups created around 1700 are now in the Green Vault in Dresden, a third in the Hermitage in St Petersburg. The fourth is in the Berlin Museum of Decorative Arts. One of the two Dresden groups was signed by Permoser. This is the basis for the attribution of the other three. On closer inspection, the Berlin work reveals not only the strange combination of the round sculptured figures of Hercules and Cupid with the Omphale, which has been trimmed on the back and prepared for a different kind of mounting, in one group, but also clear differences in the artistic quality of the individual figures: while Hercules is depicted full of physical vigour and the surface and body of the figure are highly artificially related to one another, the Omphale figure appears less refined in sculptural terms. It is possibly an indication that not all parts of the group were created by Permoser himself. This will be the subject of further art historical research.
Hercules and Omphale
The depiction of Hercules and Omphale takes up a theme from ancient mythology that was particularly popular in the Baroque period and especially appealing for stately gifts - as such precious ivory groups probably often were - and deals with the relationship between the sexes: Omphale, Queen of Lydia, had bought Hercules as a slave, as he had been ordered to do by oracle. He spent three years in the queen's service. When she learnt who the slave was, she took him as her husband. Blindly in love with her and softened by a life of opulence, Hercules condescended to spin wool and do other women's work at the queen's behest, while Omphale wore his lion skin, which is reflected in the ivory group. After three years, the hero realised his blindness and left Omphale.
For further information:
The publications documenting the losses of the National Museums in Berlin can be ordered from the online shop.
Lehmann, Klaus-Dieter / Schauerte, Günther (eds.): Cultural Treasures - Relocated and Missing. An inventory of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation 60 years after the end of the war. Berlin 2004
In the labyrinth of law? Ways to protect cultural property. Publications of the Coordination Centre for the Loss of Cultural Property Volume 5. Magdeburg 2007
Cultural property during the Second World War. Relocation - Discovery - Repatriation. Publications of the Coordination Centre for the Loss of Cultural Property Volume 4, edited by Uwe Hartmann. Magdeburg 2007