AUGUSTIN HIRSCHVOGEL Landscape with a Castle on a High Cliff at the Left.
Etching, 1546. 140x212 mm; 5 1/2x8 1/2 inches. Bull's head watermark (Briquet 14778-114803, which dates from the early 1500s). Ex-collection Dr. Gerhart Güttler (Lugt 2807b, verso). Trimmed on the plate mark, with thread margins outside the narrow black border line. A brilliant, richly-inked, early impression of this extremely scarce landscape etching.
Nealry all of Hirschvogel's (1503-1553) approximately 300 etchings date from the last decade of his life, by which time in addition to mastering the fine arts he had become an accomplished cartographer, stained glass maker and fortification designer for the city of Vienna, then under siege from Islamic invaders from the east. Hirschvogel was among the earliest group of artists to practice pure landscape etching, a pursuit that had begun with Albrecht Altdorfer in the mid 1510s (see lot 53). He was also among the first to use copper rather than iron etching plates. According to Landau and Parshall, Hirschvogel, "Is best known for the pastoral, dreamy views of the Salzkammergut [present day northern Austria, east of Salzburg] that occupied him for much of the 1540s, such conspicuous displays of calligraphic freedom of etched line that they take on a mannered, if charming, redundancy," (The Renaissance Print, 1470-1550, New Haven, 1994, pages 345-346). Bartsch 74; Hollstein 47.
