Focus on this artwork and explore the Provenance.
The history of the painting after its creation is not yet completely clear and in particular its location before 1857 remains an open question.
Probably Watteau painted the image as a commission for the merchant Pierre Crozat, for whom he also produced the series of Seasons painted at the same time. This is claimed in an exhibition catalogue from Vienna in 1966 and remains the most widely accepted theory in art history to this day, but it still cannot be proven.
In 1857 the painting appeared at the auction of the collection of Theodore Patureau in a catalogue in which it was listed as a former possession of Prince Paul d'Arenberg. Watteau maintained a friendly relationship with the ancestors of the prince in the early eighteenth century and a receipt of 14 May 1717 signed by Watteau records that he had sold two paintings to Léopold Philippe d'Arenberg. In their 1929 book Jean de Juliennes et les graveurs de Watteau au XVIIIe siècle E. Hérold and A. Vuaflart suggest that Jupiter and Antiope could have been one of these two paintings and develop a theory that de Ligne ordered the painting in 1714 during a trip to Paris and returned to collect the painting and pay for it three years later. Today this theory is largely rejected.
How the painting came into the possession of Paturae is no longer clear either, but he probably bought it from Price Paul d'Arenberg privately. In 1864 the Baron James Mayer de Rothschild bought the painting and then put it up for auction again in March 1868 through the art-dealer Bourlon de Sarty. It was bought by Louis La Caze who died the very next year, leaving it to the Louvre. The painting still hangs there today.
Louis La Caze Jupiter and Antiope Pierre Crozat Louvre James Mayer de Rothschild Léopold Philippe d'Arenberg Jupiter Paul d'Arenberg Antiope Paris Theodore Patureau Vienna Bourlon de Sarty