May 08, 2018 - Sale 2477

Sale 2477 - Lot 2

Price Realized: $ 1,875
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
CRISTOFANO DI MICHELE MARTINI, IL ROBETTA
The Adoration of the Magi.

Engraving, circa 1496-1500. 303x280 mm; 12x11 1/8 inches, thread margins.

This engraving 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 is derived from prints by Dürer and the sky is based on his Virgin and Child with the Monkey (see lot 22) 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. Bartsch 6; Hind 10