May 02, 2019 - Sale 2507

Sale 2507 - Lot 33

Price Realized: $ 2,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
LUCAS VAN LEYDEN
Golgotha.

Engraving, 1517. 290x415 mm; 11 1/2x16 3/8 inches, thread margins. A very good impression of this large engraving with strong contrasts.

According to Landau and Parshall, "Only Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533) can truly be said to have challenged Albrecht Dürer's preeminence in the field of engraving throughout the first two decades of the 16th century. Lucas built upon a rich tradition of Netherlandish painting with its own circle of patronage, and upon lively markets in Bruges and later in Antwerp, and an active history of publishing and woodcut making. He was the first internationally known peintre-graveur to emerge in the Netherlands, where material conditions for a printmaker's sucess were at least as promising as those Dürer encountered in Nuremberg," (The Renaissance Print, 1470-1550, New Haven and London, 1994, page 316).

Lucas created over 180 engravings and designed equally as many woodcuts; this is among his largest and most ambitious engravings. Like Dürer, very few of Lucas van Leyden's paintings survive. There are approximately 17 extant paintings surely attributed to him. Both he and Dürer likely found the growing market for prints in the early 16th century, and demand for their engraved works in particular, a stronger economic draw than commissions for paintings. Bartsch 74; Hollstein 74; Volbehr 69.