Thursday, June 28, 2018

Prints of Distinction over Four Centuries

Amico Aspertini
Cain in center with mirror, watching his sacrifice burn, seated near Adam and Eve
with the Expulsion from Paradise in the background

ca. 1530
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Curators at the Metropolitan Museum confidently assert that the exceptionally beautiful engraving directly above was executed by Amico Aspertini and that the subject is as described in the (long) title they have assigned it.  Those at the British Museum, on the other hand, are reserving judgment concerning both the author of the print and its subject.  The British Museum is more confident about the two Aspertini prints directly below, and they are each, as it happens, unique impressions – meaning that none of the other more-or-less numerous copies printed in the 16th century is known to have survived. 

Amico Aspertini
Three Musician-Soldiers
ca. 1510-20
drypoint
British Museum

Amico Aspertini
Presentation of the Virgin
ca. 1510-20
drypoint
British Museum

Dirk Volckertsz Coornhert after Maarten van Heemskerck
Wrestlers (plate 3 of 4)
1552
etching, engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Dirk Volckertsz Coornhert
A Shield is of no Use when Fortune Turns Her Back
ca. 1560
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Dirk Volckertsz Coornhert
Fortune does not Watch over all Sleepers
ca. 1560
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Dirk Volckertsz Coornhert
Fortune uses Man as a Plaything
ca. 1560
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Dirk Volckertsz Coornhert
Patience as the Victor over Fortune
ca. 1560
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Dirk Volckertsz Coornhert
When Fortune is Abundant the Fall will be Deeper
ca. 1560
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

J.F. Cazenave
À l'Amour il faut se rendre
ca. 1790-1820
color stipple-engraving
British Museum

Edgar Degas
Dancers in the Green Room
ca. 1875
etching
Victoria & Albert Museum

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Jane Avril
1893
lithograph
British Museum

Édouard Vuillard
Intérieur aux teintures roses II
1899
lithograph
Philadelphia Museum of Art

George Bellows
Male Torso
1916
lithograph
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

El Lissitzky
Cover of Wendingen (Dutch arts journal)
1921
lithograph
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York