AUGUSTIN HIRSCHVOGEL River Landscape with Two Buildings Connected by a Bridge.
Etching, 1545. 155x185 mm; 6 1/4x7 1/4 inches, narrow margins. A brilliant, richly-inked, early impression of this extremely scarce landscape etching.
We have found only 2 other impressions at auction in the past 30 years.
Nearly 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. 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," (Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 1470-1550, New Haven, 1994, pages 345-346). Bartsch 66; Hollstein 39.
