May 21, 2020 - Sale 2537

Sale 2537 - Lot 164

Price Realized: $ 1,125
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
MAERTEN DE VOS (after)
The Temptation of St. Anthony.

Engraving, circa 1560. 217x273 mm; 8 5/8x10 3/4 inches, small margins. Gothic lette P with a clover watermark (Briquet 8725 or similar, which dates from the early to mid-1500s). A brilliant, richly-inked impression of this extremely scarce engraving with strong contrasts and with traces of the guide lines for the text in the lower margin still distinct.

We have not found another impression at auction in the past 30 years.

Maerten de Vos (1532-1603) was a 16th century Flemish painter, primarily of historical scenes and portraits, who also worked frequently as a designer of popular engravings for various Antwerp publishers, notably the Plantin Press. Roughly 1600 engravings were created after designs by de Vos. He derived imagery for this engraving from the work of Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516).