Research
Oil on canvas. One signed Copenhagen Juny, 1802; one signed Tiarko M. Cramer, 1802. The allegorical images represented by four length female figures, each in neo-classical dress and with varied attributes such as a theatrical mask, a statuette of fertility, a set square, and a fasces.
Marks:
The painting of Jurisprudence signed and dated:
Copenhagen Juny 1802
The painting with biblical allegory signed and dated:
Tiarkow M. Cramer fecit 1802
Provenance:
Almost certainly commissioned from Nicolai Abildgaard for the residence Nytorv 5 in Copenhagen.
The renowned Abildgaard scholar Patrick Kragelund, author of the monograph Abildgaard: Kunstneren Mellem Oprørerne, has identified the present set of four paintings by Tiarco Cramer (1780-1812), as likely to have been those that were to be placed in the framed reserves of a wall elevation by Abildgaard for No. 5 Nytorv, home to a wealthy Copenhagen merchant. His reasoning is as follows: Cramer was Abildgaard’s pupil; three of the four paintings were derived from a “satyrical triptych” by Abildgaard and, crucially, it is known that this triptych was hidden from view at the time Cramer painted his versions; as his pupil, Cramer would have had exclusive access to his mentor’s three works, and the present paintings correspond both with the timing of the Nytorv commission, as well as the exact size of the original spaces on the walls where the paintings were to be placed. Furthermore, there would, of course, have been no need for Cramer to have painted a fourth picture, were it not for the fact that Nytorv 5, as drawn by Abildgaard in his first elevation, demanded four canvases.
Each of the paintings depicts a classically dressed allegorical female figure, with Jurisprudence and Philosophy originally at the sides and Theology in the center. The series was expanded by Cramer, and the revolutionary undertones muted by the addition of a fourth allegory with religious connotations. In one hand this figure holds a book with the inscription Biblia while in the other she raises a set square, emblematic as a symbol of ethics.
Full research available on request.