The Virgin with Child among the ruins
| Reference: | S11336 |
| Author | Cornelis BOS |
| Year: | 1550 ca. |
| Measures: | 215 x 315 mm |
€500.00
| Reference: | S11336 |
| Author | Cornelis BOS |
| Year: | 1550 ca. |
| Measures: | 215 x 315 mm |
€500.00
Description
Engraving, circa 1550, lacking signature and printing details.
Work not described by repertories; composition and style refer to the engraving production that flourished in Rome around the printer and engraver Antonio Lafreri (1512-1577) and the so-called Speculum romanae magnificentiae. Among the engravers employed by Lafreri's workshop, it could be the work of Cornelis Bos, whose graphic style it follows, and to whom we attribute the intaglio.
In this print we see depicted in the foreground seated the Virgin welcoming and holding her child in her arms. The woman is seated on a marble base, her long gown falls softly to the ground revealing only one foot, her hair is gathered within a veil, and she is looking upward. The Child, plump and naked, clasps his mother's neck and tries to catch her gaze. The two figures stand in front of a dark wall that vertically divides the space that opens to the right to the outline of a city. To the left is a tall bare trunk that contributes to the momentum of the composition. On the right a ruined column on the ground symbolizes the ancient pagan world. The long, intense mark, rarely crossed, generates chiaroscuro contrasts and creates a silvery atmosphere. The eyes are not described as if it were a marble statue; the exaggerated proportions certainly hark back to Michelangelo's lesson. One might assume to recognize a model, or at least some analogy, in sculptures depicting Moses or Giuliano de Medici.
Magnificent proof of this rare engraving, printed on contemporary laid paper with “pitcher with flower” watermark, trimmed at the marginal line, in excellent condition.
Cornelis BOS (1506/10 ca. — dopo il 1555)
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Cornelis [Willem] Bos was a Flemish engraver, printseller and book publisher, through whose images after paintings and reproducing ancient Roman sculptures, like the Laocoön, classic works were put in the visual repertory of Northern European artists. His work is often signed with the monogram C-B. Cornelis was born at 's Hertogenbosch, whence his surname Bos is derived, but on 1 April 1541 he was enregistered as a citizen of Antwerp, where he was therefore already established as a member of the imagemakers' Guild of Saint Luke. His earliest identified engravings (1537) reproduce Maarten van Heemskerck's Prudence and Justice (1537) and a work by Agostino Veneziano. His re-engraving of work by Marcantonio Raimondi does not necessarily indicate that he ever made a trip to Rome. Until 1544 Bos worked in Antwerp as an engraver, commissioned by publishers in the city's extensive book trade for illustrations in books. His engravings, copied from the published engravings in Italian editions, served as illustrations for a brief summary in Dutch of the treaty on architecture by Vitruvius and for a Dutch translation of Book IV of Sebastiano Serlio's architectural treatise, both published by Pieter Coecke van Aelst. Bos' engravings illustrate a text on anatomy that he produced in 1542 by the printer and publisher Antoine de Goys. In the summer of 1544 Bos was forced to flee Antwerp for his participation in an antisacerdotalist free-thinking spiritualist sect and was declared exiled by the Council of Brabant in his absence. It appears that he went to Paris, where an anatomical work published by Jérôme de Gourmont in 1545 repeats text used by Cornelis Bos and even makes use of the woodblocks formerly in his possession. A decorative patternbook also published by Jérôme de Gourmont, Livre de moresques was a pirated edition of a work published in Antwerp by Bos, c published at Paris, 1546; it served designers of mannerist scrollwork (bandelwerk) in the Low Countries. Between 1546 and 1548, from his secure refuge in Nuremberg,Cornelis Bos would publish more than a hundred engraved designs of strapwork and grotesques. Bos also produced popular engravings of religious and allegorical subjects, often dependent for their composition upon the Kleinmeister of Nuremberg, with many parallels in the output of Virgil Solis. Bos went to Groningen, where he sold paper to the city magistrate 2 December 1548. He was granted citizenship in 1550. His first wife Lijnken van Dort or van den Bos, with whom he had five children, was deceased by then and he remarried Alijdt, who came from a local family. The couple had two children. A document of 7 Mai 1555 refers to him as deceased. An inventory of his workshop and other possessions, taken 3 August 1544, which included two printing presses, and the auction of his property 3 January 1545, have been mined by historians of printmaking.
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Cornelis BOS (1506/10 ca. — dopo il 1555)
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Cornelis [Willem] Bos was a Flemish engraver, printseller and book publisher, through whose images after paintings and reproducing ancient Roman sculptures, like the Laocoön, classic works were put in the visual repertory of Northern European artists. His work is often signed with the monogram C-B. Cornelis was born at 's Hertogenbosch, whence his surname Bos is derived, but on 1 April 1541 he was enregistered as a citizen of Antwerp, where he was therefore already established as a member of the imagemakers' Guild of Saint Luke. His earliest identified engravings (1537) reproduce Maarten van Heemskerck's Prudence and Justice (1537) and a work by Agostino Veneziano. His re-engraving of work by Marcantonio Raimondi does not necessarily indicate that he ever made a trip to Rome. Until 1544 Bos worked in Antwerp as an engraver, commissioned by publishers in the city's extensive book trade for illustrations in books. His engravings, copied from the published engravings in Italian editions, served as illustrations for a brief summary in Dutch of the treaty on architecture by Vitruvius and for a Dutch translation of Book IV of Sebastiano Serlio's architectural treatise, both published by Pieter Coecke van Aelst. Bos' engravings illustrate a text on anatomy that he produced in 1542 by the printer and publisher Antoine de Goys. In the summer of 1544 Bos was forced to flee Antwerp for his participation in an antisacerdotalist free-thinking spiritualist sect and was declared exiled by the Council of Brabant in his absence. It appears that he went to Paris, where an anatomical work published by Jérôme de Gourmont in 1545 repeats text used by Cornelis Bos and even makes use of the woodblocks formerly in his possession. A decorative patternbook also published by Jérôme de Gourmont, Livre de moresques was a pirated edition of a work published in Antwerp by Bos, c published at Paris, 1546; it served designers of mannerist scrollwork (bandelwerk) in the Low Countries. Between 1546 and 1548, from his secure refuge in Nuremberg,Cornelis Bos would publish more than a hundred engraved designs of strapwork and grotesques. Bos also produced popular engravings of religious and allegorical subjects, often dependent for their composition upon the Kleinmeister of Nuremberg, with many parallels in the output of Virgil Solis. Bos went to Groningen, where he sold paper to the city magistrate 2 December 1548. He was granted citizenship in 1550. His first wife Lijnken van Dort or van den Bos, with whom he had five children, was deceased by then and he remarried Alijdt, who came from a local family. The couple had two children. A document of 7 Mai 1555 refers to him as deceased. An inventory of his workshop and other possessions, taken 3 August 1544, which included two printing presses, and the auction of his property 3 January 1545, have been mined by historians of printmaking.
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