?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
MARTIN SCHONGAUER Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene.
Engraving, circa 1480-90. 163x160 mm; 6 3/8x6 1/4 inches. With narrow to thread margins outside the black border line. A brilliant, early impression of this extremely scarce engraving, with all the fine lines distinct, with little to no sign of wear and strong contrasts.
Provenance: John Malcolm, London (Lugt 1489 and 1780, verso); and the British Museum, London (Lugt 305, verso).
There is a crude, Lower Rhenish engraving copied from the current engraving by Schongauer (1448-1491), an impression of which is falsely dated 1477 by a contemporary hand. Scholars therefore believed that the current work dated from early in Schongauer's career, in the mid-1470s. However, according to more recent scholarship, the engraving dates from later, as Shestack notes, "The simplicity and exquisiteness of form and the graceful balance of the composition argue for a later date, probably in the midst of Schongauer's mature period, between 1480 and 1490," (Shestack, Fifteenth Century Engravings of Northern Europe, Washington, D.C., 1967, catalogue number 77).
We have found only 3 other impressions at auction in the past 30 years. Bartsch 15; Lehrs 15.
