A
Small Selection of Old Master Prints
These
links: Old
Master Prints 01 and Old
Master Prints 02, will allow you
to view
the featured prints from earlier series
of Old Master Prints |
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also :
Click
on a thumbnail (left)
to link directly with the entry for that
print, or scroll down to view all this month's
selection. Images are not at very high resolution.
If
you require further information on any
print featured here, please contact
us. When
a print has been sold it will be marked
as Sold.
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LUCAS VAN LEYDEN
Leiden c1489? – 1533
Neither
Lucas’ birth nor baptism are recorded, so that his date of birth is speculative.
Even granted a precociously early mastery of engraving, 1489 would seem to be the earliest date admissible.
St
Jerome (AD 342-420), one of the four Latin “Fathers of the Church”, translated the Bible into Latin. His version, the Vulgate, became the officially accepted text.
Jerome wrote an account of his four years’ penitence in the Syrian dessert, with ‘only the scorpions and wild beasts for company’, from which grew the popular legend of his pulling a thorn from the paw of a lion, who became his devoted friend.
St
Jerome in a Landscape
New Hollstein 112
85 x 108 mm
Original engraving, 1513.
The plate signed with the initial L and dated.
A good silvery impression.
Trimmed to the plate, remains of tape at the
edges verso.
Sold
With
an unidentified collector’s stamp, monogram initials HR (Lugt 4050)
The
saint studying Hebrew during his four hermit
years.
The two most commonly represented
attributes of St Jerome are the lion and
a cardinal’s hat, both of which Lucas has
included here. Historically the office of
cardinal did not exist in Jerome’s day, but
while in Rome the saint did hold a papal
appointment.
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KAREL VAN MALLERY
Antwerp c1571 - c1635
Van
Mallery trained in the workshop of engraver
and publisher Philips Galle in Antwerp from
1585 to c1595, in which year he left to go
to Rome. On his return, in 1597, he became
a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke,
and then married Catharina Galle, one of
Philips Galle’s daughters. He is the subject
of a van Dyck Iconographia plate.
The
Flemish Mannerist painter and designer Maarten
de Vos (1532-1603) spent eight years in Rome,
1550-1558, before returning to Antwerp, where
he set up the Society of the Romanists, for
artists and connoisseurs who appreciated
Rome’s humanist culture. He was entered in the Antwerp Guild as a master in 1558.
After
1575 de Vos was mainly engaged in drawing
designs for prints and was a fertile inventor
of a prolific quantity of images which he
supplied to a number of publishers.
PEACE
bringing Prosperity
and Encouraging the Arts
Hollstein (de Vos) 1273 i/ii
178 x 232 mm
Engraving by Karel van Mallery after Maarten
de Vos, c1599.
Plate 8, the final plate,
of the cycle of the ‘Vicissitudes of Human Life’.
First state of two, with the publisher’s address of Philips Galle.
A fine impression, in generally very good condition.
A couple of small sanguine stains at the foot.
£650
Peace
not only holds a cornucopia of fruit, she
presides over a ‘cornucopia’ of objects symbolising the many advantages that peace brings.
Engraving tools, musical instruments, an artist’s palette (with de Vos’ ‘signature’), a mallet, mathematical and geographical aids, and architectural tools at the lower right, balance money bags, plate and jewellery at the left, while in the background a building is being constructed, actors are staging an entertainment and children play, amongst other activities.
The later decades of the 16th century saw war and destruction throughout northern Europe, in the battle between Catholicism and Protestantism.
In the Low Countries this resulted in the separation of Catholic Flanders, still ruled by the Spanish Hapsburgs, from the seven northern Protestant Dutch provinces which declared independence under the House of Orange.
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CLAUDE GELLEE, le LORRAIN
Chamagne, Duchy of Lorrain 1600 – 1682 Rome
At
the age of twelve Claude was taken into the
household of the Roman painter Agostino Tasso
as a pastry cook, but he became Tasso’s
studio assistant. In 1625 he returned to
Lorraine for a couple of years, where he
worked with the court painter Claude Deruet.
It may have been contact with the etcher Jacques
Callot, a friend of Deruet, that instigated
Claude’s interest in etching, which he took
up after he resettled in Rome in 1627.
Claude’s reputation as a landscape painter
was established during the 1630’s, also the
period when he was first active as an etcher.
His etchings, like his paintings, are atmospheric,
concerned with the tonal values of light, inspired
by his love of the Roman Campagna and the coastline
around the Gulf of Naples; poetic and classically
harmonious in their composition.
An
artist particularly admired in Britain, twenty-four
of his twenty-seven etching plates were brought
to England in the early 19th century.
Le
Port de Mer au Fanal
Harbour
with a Lighthouse
Mannocci 37 iv/v
142 x 200 mm
Original etching c1638-41.
The plate signed
with the initials CL. With the plate number
7.
Penultimate state with the later additional
numbering NN44 p8 in the lower plate border,
added in the 18th century before 1754 (and
subsequently removed by 1816).
A very good
impression in this state.
On 18th century laid
paper, without watermark. Trimmed to or just
outside the platemark, small defects at the
sheet corners.
£500
Closely
related to a drawing, c1633-34, in Claude’s Liber
Veritatis.
Mannocci
suggests that in the late 1630’s Claude
was planning the publication of a set of twelve
landscape etchings, for which he added numbers
in the left border to some of his existing
plates and etched new plates which he gave
a number immediately (as was the case with
Le Port de Mer au Fanal, unknown in impressions
prior to the number ‘7’).
He
found the subjects for his new etchings among
his earlier drawings in the Liber.
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REMBRANDT van Rijn
Leyden 1606 – 1669 Amsterdam
In
its earlier states, before the plate was
reduced in size, this was Rembrandt’s largest portrait etching. It is the second of two plates portraying the calligrapher Lieven van Coppenol, who is thought to have been dissatisfied with the first plate.
This
second plate, based in reverse on a preliminary
oil sketch (now in the Met. New York) was,
before being cut down, almost the exact size
of Rembrandt’s painting.
Lieven
Willemsz van Coppenol, Writing Master
Bartsch
283; Hollstein 283 vi/vi; Usticke 283 ix/xi
158 x 133 mm
Original etching, c1658.
An 18th century impression on thin laid paper,
after reduction of the plate. A new borderline
introduced and the plate margins burnished
clean.
A good clear impression, probably
pre-Basan.
Thread margins all round, except
at the top left where trimmed just outside
of the image.
A short tear at the top supported
verso by old tape, one tiny pinprick abrasion
touched in, a small nick in the top plate
margin.
Sold
Van
Coppenol (c1599-c1677) began his career as
the headmaster of the French School in Amsterdam
but when illness caused his retirement he
pursued his passion for calligraphy.
The
British Museum has a first state impression
personally annotated by van Coppenol in the
lower sheet margin in ornate flowing script.
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GIOVANNI ANTONIO CANAL, called CANALETTO
Venice 1697 – 1768 Venice
La
Libreria, V. The Marciana Library, Venice
Bromberg 18 iii/iii
145 x 212 mm
Original etching, c1740.
The plate signed.
Third (final) state, the title removed from
the lower plate border.
A good impression
on laid paper.
Thread margins or trimmed
on the platemark.
A small ink spot in the
left margin.
Sold
The
state library, named for Venice’s patron saint, St Mark, was designed by Jacopo Sansovino. Construction began in 1537. Sited on the Piazzetta, next to the Bell Tower, the Renaissance library faces the Doges’ Gothic palace. Canaletto etched the scene in reverse so that when printed it is topographically correct.
A puppet show is taking place near the waterfront.
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JEAN FRANÇOIS JANINET
Paris 1752 – 1814 Paris
Janinet
worked in Louis Marin Bonnet’s studio in 1771 and learnt the technique of colour printing from multiple superimposed stipple/crayon engraved plates, known as pastel engraving. On his own account Janinet developed an aquatint variation, though roughening the plate with a mattoir rather than chemically, which he called gravure à lavis, engraving in imitation of coloured wash.
He
engraved several fine plates in this technique
after the miniaturist Jacques Charlier (1706-1790,
who may have studied with Boucher and produced
similar erotic mythological scenes) while
there was still a market for such Rococo
frivolity, soon to be overtaken by the upright
morality of the neo-classical and within
a decade by the French Revolution.
From
1593 Charlier was styled painter and miniaturist
to the King. Other patrons included Mme de
Pompadour and various members of the French
aristocracy, such as the duc de Caylus and
duc d’Orleans.
VENUS
SUR LES AUX (sic) Venus
on the Waves
Portalis & Béraldi 17; Inventaire Fonds Français
242
133 x 134 mm (rectangular plate); 88 x 106 mm (oval image)
Three-colour aquatint, c 1777, after a miniature by Jaques Charlier.
Published
and engraved by Janinet.
Printed in blue,
pink and black on stout laid paper, trimmed
in the margins.
Sold
Venus
riding on a dolphin, one of her ‘attributes’,
recalling her birth from the sea.
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