[The Triumph of Time]
Netherlands - c.1550?

Oil on panel
44,8 x 36 cm
Painted inv. nr of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum on verso: 557 and 174 H
Handwritten label on verso with transcription of museum's catalog

Provenance:
Ferdinand Franz Wallraf (1748-1824) collection, Cologne
Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne (by bequest since 1824/25)
Count Adelmann von Adelmannsfelden collection (bought from the museum in 1924)
Sale, Stuttgart, 1973
Private collection, Belgium

Published:
Dr. Wolfgang Müller von Köningswinter, Verzeichniss der Gemälde-Sammlung des Museums Wallraf-Richartz, M. DuMont-Schauberg, Cologne, 1862, p.73, cat.411 (titled "Die Zeit reitet auf einem Hirsch")
J. Niessen, Verzeichniss der Gemälde-Sammlung des Museums Wallraf-Richartz in Köln, Chr. Gehly'schen Buchdruckerei, Cologne, 1869, p.93, cat.557
Hiltrud Kier, Frank Günther Zehnder, Susanne Blöcker, Nicole Buchmann, Gisela Goldberg, Roland Krischel, Lust und Verlust II. Corpus-Band zu Kölner Gemäldesammlungen 1800-1860, Wienand Verlag, Cologne, 1998, p.144, cat.285 (ill.)

This anonymous painting used to belong, together with “The Triumph of Love”, to the collection of the Walraff-Richartz Museum in Cologne. In the museum's inventory from 1869, it is mentioned as "Holbein's School", in the 1998 study "Lust und Verlust II", its suggested origin is Dutch.
The subject refers to Petrarca's "Trionfi", a poem in six parts that includes besides the two aforementioned ones the triumphs of Chastity, Death, Fame, and Eternity. It is most likely that the painting presented here was part of a full circle of the six "Triumphs", but the actual whereabouts of those other five panels is unknown.

We would like to thank Dr Roland Krischel, Head of the Department of Medieval Painting at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Foundation to have provided us with the details on the provenance of this painting.