CRISTOFANO DI MICHELE MARTINI, IL ROBETTA Adoration of the Magi.
Engraving, circa 1496-1500. 303x280 mm; 12x111/8 inches, small to thread margins. Fleur-de-lys watermark. Ex-collection Hirschler (Lugt Supplement 633a, verso). A brilliant, richly-inked and evenly printed impression on thin cream laid paper.
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. Meanwhile, 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 were printed during the 19th-century; earlier printings such as the current work are extremely scarce. Hind 10; Levenson, et als., Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1973, p. 296, no. 118.
