?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 100,000 - $ 150,000
MARTIN SCHONGAUER Christ Carrying the Cross: the Large Plate.
Engraving, circa 1480. 290x432 mm; 11 1/2x17 inches, narrow to thread margins. Small bull's head with a circle and cross watermark (Lehrs 32, which he cites for the finest and earliest impressions of this subject). Ex-collection the Graphische Sammlung, Munich (Lugt 1614 and 1615); sold Galerie Bassenge, Berlin, December 1991, lot 5386. A superb, dark and richly-inked impression of this large, extremely scarce and important early engraving.
We have found less than 12 other impressions altogether and only 3 other impressions of this quality at auction in the past 30 years.
Working in Colmar, once a part of southwestern Germany that is now Alsatian France, Schongauer (1430-1491) was among the earliest known northern artists to fully utilize the craft of engraving. Many of his prints, like his few known paintings, reveal an affinity with the work of early Netherlandish artists such as Jan van Eyck, Roger van der Weyden and Dirk Bouts. Schongauer imitated the monumentality associated with the altar paintings of these celebrated Netherlandish artists, and almost certainly acquired direct compositional and figural ideas for this particular engraving from drawings now associated with Jan van Eyck's workshop.
Schongauer's exquisitely engraved images were circulated widely throughout Europe. The sheer number of engraved copies of Schonaguer's prints, made by other artists during his lifetime, attests to his popularity and the significant demand for his work in the late 15th/early 16th century (Schongauer made approximately 115 engravings of different subjects, of which there are an equivalent number of different copies made by other artists during the late 15th century alone. One of Schongauer's best-known engravings, The Death of the Virgin, early 1470s, was copied in at least 7 different prints by the early 16th century). Most importantly, he was one of the first printmakers who developed an individual style and whose engravings helped to stimulate an interest in collecting prints hitherto unknown in northern Europe.
Schongauer's work paved the way for the success of subsequent printmakers and was profoundly influential to the generation of engravers who proceeded him, most notably Albrecht Dürer (see lots 1-49 and 59-90). In 1492, the 21-year-old prodigious Dürer had intended on training with Schongauer but arrived to the master engraver's workshop just months after his death. Dürer went on to emulate Schongauer, by incising deep engraved lines in his plates to extend their printing life, thereby increasing their commercial viability, and ultimately surpassed Schongauer's appeal and popularity. Bartsch 21; Lehrs 9.
