Dido
| Reference: | S39261 |
| Author | Hans Sebald BEHAM |
| Year: | 1520 |
| Measures: | 90 x 120 mm |
€3,000.00
| Reference: | S39261 |
| Author | Hans Sebald BEHAM |
| Year: | 1520 |
| Measures: | 90 x 120 mm |
€3,000.00
Description
Engraving, 1520, dated and lettered on a tablet at lower right "Reginae Didonis imago improbe amor: quid non mortalia pectora cogis virg: in quarto Aeneidos,1520, HsP".
Example of the second state of two, with the plate cut.
Magnificent example, evenly inked, printed on contemporary laid paper with “High Crown” watermark (Meder 20, Briquet 4902), with unusual large wide margins, in excellent condition.
The composition shows the nearly nude Dido, wearing a wreathlike crown, seated at right in profile to left, on a stone, holding the dagger in her right hand. The inscription quotes Aeneid IV, 412, the Virgilio's exclamation in response to Dido's suicide. The inscription bears the verse with Virgil's commentary on Dido's suicide: Improbe Amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis!
Dido, eldest daughter of Belo, king of Tyre, was the wife of the wealthy and elderly Sicherba. Her succession to the throne, though by right, was opposed by her brother, Pygmalion, who by deception killed her husband and became the new king of Tyre. The woman, forced to flee, finally reached the Libyan coast and obtained permission from Iarba, king of the Getuli, to settle there and found a new city, Carthage, of which she became queen, preserving her vow of chastity to the late Sicherba. In Virgil's Aeneid, however, the comely queen falls in love, with the complicity of Venus and Eros, with Aeneas who has arrived in Carthage. News of the love between them reaches King Iarba who, jealous of Dido's rejection, invokes Jupiter who, through Mercury, forces the hero's new departure. Aeneas, therefore, leaves Carthage. Dido, after an extreme and intense encounter, curses her lover and invokes eternal enmity between their progeny. The tragic turn of events occurs when the queen, having seen the Trojan fleet receding and having had a pyre built on which to burn what bound her to Aeneas, realizing that she still belonged to him, in despair, after inflicting a fatal blow on herself, threw herself into the fire (Aeneid IV, 412).
Shortly before 1520, some young artists in Albercht Dürer's circle took to making very small engravings that challenged the viewer with a miniature world of new secular subject matter and unconventional interpretations of traditional themes. Because of the small size of their engravings, these artists have long been affixed with the collective, and unflattering, name of Small Nuremberg Masters. The core of the group consists of three artists from Nuremberg, Hans Sebald & Bartel Beham and Georg Pencz, and in addition Jacob Bink from Cologne and Heinrich Aldegrever from Soest.
Bibliografia
Pauli 1901-11, Hans Sebald Beham: Ein Kritisches Verzeichniss seiner Kupferstiche Radirungen und Holzschnitte (84.II); Hollstein, German engravings, etchings and woodcuts c.1400-1700 (84.II); Bartsch, Le Peintre graveur (VIII.148.80)
Hans Sebald BEHAM Nuremberg 1500 - Frankfurt 1550
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Engraver, etcher, designer of woodcuts and stained glass, painter and illustrator. In contemporary documents and prints he was nearly always identified as Sebald Beham although since the 17th century (Sandrart) and into the early years of the 20th he has mistakenly been called Hans Sebald Beham on the basis of his monogram: HSP or HSB. This reflects S[ebald] Peham/Beham with the P (Nuremberg pronunciation) changing to B c. 1531, when he appears to have moved to Frankfurt. Sandrart’s biography of him is illustrated with a printed portrait similar to Sebald’s painted Self-portrait in his David panel in the Louvre; around the Sandrart portrait is an inscription identifying him as painter and engraver. Only one of Sebald’s panel paintings has survived (the Story of David, 1534; Paris, Louvre), though documents cited by Hampe and Vogler refer to him as a journeyman for painting in 1521 and as having his own journeyman—i.e. running a workshop—in 1525. Sebald is best known to posterity, however, for his prints, of which he produced a prodigious quantity: approximately 252 engravings, 18 etchings and 1500 woodcuts, including woodcut book illustrations. Biographical information is scanty: Sandrart alleged that he was trained by Barthel and opened a tavern, the bad reputation of which derived from his own dissolute life. Unquestionably, however, he was industrious and meticulous artistically. He began producing prints in quantity in 1519, though a few date to before then: a woodcut of Lust from a series of the Ten Commandments—a youthfully naive work produced in 1512 when Sebald was 12—and a sheet of sometimes awkwardly drawn pen-and-ink studies of male and female heads on red prepared paper (1518; Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.). His first engraving, dated 1518, is a diminutive Portrait of a Young Woman.
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Hans Sebald BEHAM Nuremberg 1500 - Frankfurt 1550
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Engraver, etcher, designer of woodcuts and stained glass, painter and illustrator. In contemporary documents and prints he was nearly always identified as Sebald Beham although since the 17th century (Sandrart) and into the early years of the 20th he has mistakenly been called Hans Sebald Beham on the basis of his monogram: HSP or HSB. This reflects S[ebald] Peham/Beham with the P (Nuremberg pronunciation) changing to B c. 1531, when he appears to have moved to Frankfurt. Sandrart’s biography of him is illustrated with a printed portrait similar to Sebald’s painted Self-portrait in his David panel in the Louvre; around the Sandrart portrait is an inscription identifying him as painter and engraver. Only one of Sebald’s panel paintings has survived (the Story of David, 1534; Paris, Louvre), though documents cited by Hampe and Vogler refer to him as a journeyman for painting in 1521 and as having his own journeyman—i.e. running a workshop—in 1525. Sebald is best known to posterity, however, for his prints, of which he produced a prodigious quantity: approximately 252 engravings, 18 etchings and 1500 woodcuts, including woodcut book illustrations. Biographical information is scanty: Sandrart alleged that he was trained by Barthel and opened a tavern, the bad reputation of which derived from his own dissolute life. Unquestionably, however, he was industrious and meticulous artistically. He began producing prints in quantity in 1519, though a few date to before then: a woodcut of Lust from a series of the Ten Commandments—a youthfully naive work produced in 1512 when Sebald was 12—and a sheet of sometimes awkwardly drawn pen-and-ink studies of male and female heads on red prepared paper (1518; Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.). His first engraving, dated 1518, is a diminutive Portrait of a Young Woman.
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