River landscape

Etching, 1559 circa, signed on the plate in the lower right corner with the initials D.B.

The history of this etching is very controversial. We attribute it, for clear stylistic reasons and for affinity with other similar anonymous landscapes, to Etienne Duperac from Bordeaux. The work belongs to the series of Landscapes with mythological subjects related to Duperac's brief Venetian period, with influences derived from Titian's painting. Of extreme interest, they are made in etching with strokes that recall the style of the engravers of the school of Fontainebleau.

The most recent study of this anonymous work is by Nathalie Strasser (see Le Beau Style, no. 220), who reconstructs its history. In a note about the Flemish Dirk Barentsen, Mariette retains the following data: "D. B. on several plates of landscapes which one arranges in the work of Titian and which I believe serious by Thiery Bernard, in Flemish Dieterich Barent. He had stayed in Venice for a long time and had been the disciple of Titian, in whom this great painter had the most confidence." But this artist does not seem to have engraved himself. For this reason Nagler attributes the present country view to Dominique Barrière, a pupil of Claude Lorrain. This proposal, which would place the execution of the piece in the second half of the XVII century, seems to us difficult to accept. Catelli Isola gives the print to Cock and includes it in a "series of 14 plates representing landscapes with biblical and mythological scenes" of Titian inspiration. Strasser classifies the work as anonymous, believing it to be of Italian origin, since the exemplar examined showed the watermark of the "lily in the single circle" (Woodward 98) of clear Italic manufacture.

However, although not classified among the 87 engravings attributed to Duperac by Robert-Dumesnil, there seems to be no doubt about its assignment to the French artist. During his brief stay in Venice, before leaving for Rome where he became the leading exponent of archaeological representations of ancient Roman remains, Duperac collaborated or engraved on behalf of the Asolo publisher Giovanni Francesco Camocio. Of this series of landscapes of Titian inspiration some, anonymous, bear the address Apud Camocium. Camocio was the owner of the bookshop Al segno della Piramide in San Lio in Merceria, where his main activity was the sale of prints and engravings, intaglio reproductions of works of art and maps. He disappeared with the plague in Venice in 1575, and his plates were acquired by the rival typography of Donato Bertelli, as evidenced by the famous Isolario by Camocio, later reprinted by Bertelli, and the many other works of cartographic character that Donato reprinted using the plates of Camocio. Therefore, it seems to us highly plausible that the "mysterious" initials D.B. of this work may be the editorial imprint of Donato Bertelli; initials that the publisher used for numerous cartographic works (cf. Bifolco-Ronca, Cartografia e topografia italiana del XVI secolo, 2018).

 The probable influence of Titian can be seen here, above all, in the way the site is organized in large diagonals (the plant motif on the left is matched by a rock motif on the right), the lowered viewpoint that tends to close off the composition in the background, and the resolutely pastoral character of the scene. The landscape scene, however, has an artificial quality that brings it closer to the small, purely imaginary compositions of the second half of the sixteenth century: here the artist combines eclectic architectural motifs (the Nordic-style castle, the mill, the half-timbered farmhouse) with a nature that expresses a diversity that is more intellectual than real. On the other hand, the characters who populate the scene, fishermen, hunters and washerwomen, are described here in their ordinary activities. The engraver is fond of using short and expeditious lines that he distributes freely, as one would when handling a pen. A slight clumsiness in the application of the shadows, which contradict the general lighting of the image, leads us to conclude that the composition thrown on the copper is of his invention.

Etienne Duperac was an architect, painter, engraver, and topographer. Around 1559 he arrived in Rome where he stayed for more than twenty years and in 1572 he prepared the hall for the conclave that elected Ugo Boncompagni pope under the name of Gregory XIII. In his homeland he returned permanently in the last decade of the century with the appointment of architect of Henry IV, for whom he built in the Tuileries Palace the Pavillon de Fore. His activity as an acute draftsman of antiquity, engraver and topographer, seems to take place mainly in Rome, the city where his compatriots Antonio Lafreri and Lorenzo della Vaccheria, who published his works, had started flourishing workshops of chalcographic publishing.

Exemple in the probable second state of two (or third of three if there were a proof with the address of Camocio and one without editorial indications unknown today). Beautiful impression, on contemporary laid paper with watermark not well readable - a circle with half moon? - with margins, traces of central vertical fold on the verso, otherwise in excellent condition.

Very rare work. 

Bibliografia

Emmanuel Lurin, Étienne Dupérac, graveur, peintre et architecte (vers 1535? - 1604). Un artiste-antiquaire entre l'Italie et la France, Tesi di Laurea, Paris 2006, C. Bragaglia Venuti, Etienne Dupérac and Pirro Ligorio in "Print Quarterly", XXIII - 4, 2006; Catelli Isola, Immagini da Tiziano, n. 20; Nathalie Strasser, in Le Beau Style, n. 220.