Titus Manlius Torquatus ordering the execution of his son [Allegory of Justice]

Titus Manlius Torquatus ordering the execution of his son; standing at right in front of a group of soldiers and holding down the head of the male figure at left kneeling in front of a guillotine-like structure.

Engraving, 1553, signed with monogram and dated on a tablet at lower centre. Lettered at upper right: 'Tit. Manlius filiu sine eius iussu cum hoste pugnantem obtruncavit'.

“In the fifteenth century, panel paintings on the theme of "Examples of Justice" were traditionally commissioned to decorate town halls. In the sixteenth century the theme was encountered with less frequency and must be considered something of a rarity in the graphic arts. An exception is Aldegrever's pair of engravings of 1553 on the theme of justice: Titus Manlius Beheading His Son, an event of the fourth century B.C. recorded by Livy; and a scene often called The Severe Father (following Aldegrever's own garbled Latin inscription), which apparently illustrates the legend of Herkinbald. In the latter engraving, Herkinbald is seen sitting up from his deathbed and cutting the throat of his evil nephew who had raped a woman. In both instances, the theme of justice is emphasized by the fact that punishment is being meted out by an authority to a member of his own family with unmitigated severity.

Titus Manlius Imperiosus Torquatus was twice dictator and three times consul between the years 353 and 340 B.C. While he was Roman consul an edict was issued forbidding single combat. His son (also named Titus Manlius), however, took up the challenge of Geminus Maecius, a commander in the Latin League, and killed him with a blow of his lance through Geminus's throat (depicted in the background of Aldegrever's print). The son sought out his father and announced, "Father, that all men might truly report me to be your son, I bring these equestrian spoils, stripped from the body of an enemy who challenged me". Titus Manlius wasted no time in making an example of this transgression of military law, and had his son decapitated on the spot. The son was buried with full military honors. In Aldegrever's print the astonishment expressed by the attendant soldiers may reflect Livy's description, "All were astounded at so shocking a command; every man looked upon the axe as lifted against himself, and they were hushed with fear more than with reverence."

The rudiments of Aldegrever's composition derive from Pencz's engraving of the same subject (B. 76, Landau 84). However, in terms of engraving style this, perhaps more than any of Aldegrever's prints, may be considered a pastiche of techniques culled from the study of Albrecht Dürer. Titus Manlius' shiny metallic armor and rough chain mail seems derived from Dürer's Saint George on Foot (B. 53), the texture of the guillotine's masonry base with its chipped edges can be found in most of the sheets from the Engraved Passion or in the slab upon which Melencolia I (B. 74) is seated, and the wonderfully engraved knotty timber of the guillotine is almost unthinkable without a knowledge of the beams in Dürer's Saint Jerome in His Study (B. 60).

The brutality of these scenes of justice may seem excessive, but it is fully in keeping with the genre and its fifteenth-century antecedents. This pair of prints might have been worthy of collecting as miniature versions of traditional monumental panel paintings showing examples of justice. It is ironic that Aldegrever's composition, Titus Manlius Having His Son Executed, ultimately found its way back to its conceptual source as a highly visible civic admonition: in the second half of the sixteenth century, Albert von Soest used the engraving as a model for a wooden relief to decorate the door to the Lüneburg town hall” (cf. S. Goddard in “The World in Miniature. Engravings by the German Little Masters 1500-1550” pp. 96-97).

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.

A fine impression, printed on contemporary laid paper, trimmed to the platemark, paper crease at upper left corner, minimal restoration at upper right corner, otherwise in good conditions.

Bibliografia

New Hollstein (German), The New Hollstein: German engravings, etchings and woodcuts 1400-1700 (72); Bartsch, Le Peintre graveur (VIII.388.72); “The World in Miniature. Engravings by the German Little Masters 1500-1550” pp. 96-97, n. 20.