?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 8,000
ALBRECHT DÜRER Sol Iustitiae.
Engraving, circa 1500. 109x79 mm; 4 1/4x3 1/8 inches, thread margins. A very good, richly-inked Meder a impression, with strong contrasts and before the wiping scratches. Partial high crown watermark (Meder 20, which he dates from the late 1400s / early 1500s and notes for early impressions of this engraving).
Provenance: Unidentified collector, initials J. B. P. ink stamp (Lugt 1427, verso); and Wolfgang von Dallwitz, Berlin (Lugt 2656, verso).
In this enigmatic engraving by Dürer (1471-1528), the main figure Sol Iustitiae ("Sun of Righteousness") has been interpreted as Christ as the Sun of Justice, a reference to Judgment Day. Dürer made the image during a period of upheaval, particularly in south central Europe, and on the heels of his celebrated series of Apocalypse woodcuts. There were sporadic outbreaks of the plague throughout the late 1400s; in 1499 the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I approved the expulsion of the Jews from Nuremberg, Dürer's hometown (their houses and property were confiscated, their cemetery was destroyed, and the tombstones were used for building purposes); and Montenegro, the last free monarchy in the Balkans, was annexed by the Ottoman Empire, signalling a terror that the Muslims would soon overrun Europe. Bartsch 79; Meder 73.
