Oct 31, 2008 - Sale 2160

Sale 2160 - Lot 2

Price Realized: $ 1,200
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
CRISTOFANO DI MICHELE MARTINI, IL ROBETTA
Adoration of the Magi.

Engraving, circa 1496-1500. 303x280 mm; 12x11 1/8 inches, small margins. A very good, well-inked and evenly-printed impression.

According to Levenson, this print is based on Filippino Lippi's painting of the same subject which dates from 1496 and is now in the Uffizi, Florence. Robetta also adopted passages from other contemporaneous prints. The hat above his signature, for instance, is copied from Schongauer's Adoration of the Magi (Lehrs 6), as are the heads of the ox and ass to the viewer's right of the Virgin and Child. The landscape derives from prints by Dürer and the sky is based on his Virgin and Child with the Monkey (Bartsch 42) and Sea Monster (Bartsch 71). The original copper plate for the current lot is now in the British Museum and many extant impressions, like the current work, were printed during the 19th-century. Hind 10; Levenson, et als., Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1973, p. 296, no. 118.