?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
PIETER BRUEGEL (AFTER) The Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind.
Engraving, circa 1643. 180x228 mm; 7 1/4x9 inches, thread margins. First state (of 2), before the number and Bible verse designation lower right. Partial crowned jug with two handles and a fleur-de-lys watermark. Published by Claes Jansz. II Visscher. A very good, well-inked impression of this extremely scarce engraving.
According to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, where there are two impressions of this subject, the etching was made by an anonymous 17th century printmaker, published by Amsterdam printseller, Claes Jansz. II Visscher, and based on Bruegel's (1525/30-1569) De parabel der blinden, distemper on linen canvas, 1568, now in the collection of the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. Etched in reverse of the painting, it employs the same composition with blind men, dressed like vagrants and holding long wooden canes, following a diagonal line across the image to a river in which they will soon fall. As in the painting, there is a village in the background with a church steeple. While there are only three blind men in the engraving, instead of six in Bruegel's painting, the one at the front (who has already fallen in the Bruegel painting) wears a similar hurdy gurdy player as in the painting.
