Permanent Collection

1800–1820

WORKSABOUT THE PERIODARTISTS

WORKS

Franc Kavčič/Caucig

(Gorizia, 1755 – Vienna, 1828)

Narcissus
before 1810, oil, canvas, 101,5 x 113 cm

NG S 3349, National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana

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The handsome Narcissus was the son of the god Cephisus and the naiad Liriope. He refused the love of the mountain nymph Echo, which caused her to waste away. Finally only her voice remained of her, as an echo. Nemesis, the goddess of just punishement ( according to other sources it was Aphrodite, the goddess of love ) heard the curse uttered by one of Echo's suitors, so she punished Narcissus. When tired of hunting, he was on his way home, he stopped at a pond in the woods and fell in love with the reflection of his own image, which he, however, could not touch. He, too, now began to waste away because of love - sickness and finally turned into a narcissus, the flower that was named after him. The narcissus has become the symbol of sensual, cool and heartless beauty.

Preservation: The painting was restored in recent time; the canvas was streched on a new frame. Ultraviolet light shows retouches in the sky, upper right and on the water beneath the leg. Chalk ground.
Restored: 2006, Kemal Selmanović, Ljubljana
Provenance: Before 1810: painted for Palais Auersperg in Vienna; 1953: the painting in the Kaiser Saal was bought, together with the palace, by consul Alfred Weiss. After his death the palace was sold in 1987; 2006: the National Gallery of Slovenia bought the painting from a private collector of Vienna.
Exhibition: Franc Kavčič/Caucig; Paintings for Palais Auersperg in Vienna; National Gallery of Ljubljana, 24 October 2007 - 10 February 2008
Lit: Annalen 1810, p. 359 ( several scenes from Gessner's Idylls and after Athenaeus in the palace of prince Auersperg in Vienna ); Boeckh 1825, p. 328 (twelve paintings, part landscapes part histories ); Kukuljević 1825, p. 153 ( various paintings showing the " environs " and historical scenes ); Palais Auersperg, c. 1957, p. 23 ( Yellow Marble hall, overdoors with Classical subject - matter, Italian painter, 18 th c. ); Rozman 1978, pp. 61, 150 - 151; Rozman 2004, p. 19; Rozman 2005, p. 26.

ABOUT THE PERIOD

Neoclassicism

Franc Kavčič/Caucig was an important representative of European Neo-classicist painting. Even though he depicted stories from Greco-Roman antiquity, his ethical message is fully contemporary and mirrors the time of great social changes.

In the 1780s, Kavčič was trained in Rome where he drew also at the French Academy at the time of the second sojourn of Jacques Louis David in the Eternal City, and when Angelika Kauffmann occupied the former residence of Anton Raphael Mengs. After more than twenty years of professorship at the Vienna art academy, Kavčič was appointed director of its painting and sculpture school. He also led the painting department of the Viennese porcelain factory, and towards the end of his life he became an honorary member of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. Several of his compositions thus appeared on the products of the imperial porcelain works.

His paintings are characteristic for their compositional monumentality and clarity, impeccable modelling by means of sharp drawing, thin polished paintlayers, underlined role of female protagonists in his scenes, and academic reserve. He relied for his motifs on the rich treasury of classical history and mythology as well as biblical stories. The Old-Testament Judgement of Solomon as a narrative of the ruler’s wisdom was thus a very suitable subject matter for the prestigious commission from Emperor Francis I. As to literary sources, Kavčič was inspired by the Idylls of Salomon Gessner. The painter’s landscapes are of the Arcadian type, they are ideal and thoughtfully composed in accord with classical rules and his travel memories. They contain architectural vestiges of the glorious past and are animated by means of tiny pastoral scenes.

The painting output by Kavčič had some influence on his numerous Viennese students in the first half of the 19th century, while in the history of art he also left trace by taking part in the intense polemics with the members of the Brotherhood of St Luke, when he defended the then already conservative ideas.

ARTISTS

Owner	Birth - death
Anonymous	-
Moritz Michael Daffinger	(Lichtental, 1790 − Vienna, 1849)
Anton Dietrich	(Vienna, 1799−1872)
Franc Kavčič/Caucig	(Gorizia, 1755 – Vienna, 1828)