Grotesque battle

Frieze on dark background with grotesque battle involving animals and peasants of both sexes, with some of them riding donkeys and fighting each other, armed with tools.

Engraving, c. 1550/72, signed in plate lower right.

Example in the first state of four. Magnificent proof, rich in tone, printed on contemporary laid paper, trimmed to copperplate, in excellent condition.

Plate from a set of twelve, published while Delaune was still in France as indicated by the French copyright. According to Robert-Dumesnil, the set is formed by two groups of prints, engraved at different dates.

Like many of Delaune's prints, this oblong composition with a frieze-like presentation of warriors, horses, and grotesque figures clashing in battle is part of a cycle of engravings comprising a dozen prints in all. The subjects of the other works in the suite are all combat: armed soldiers, naked men, centaurs, satyrs and Lapiths, men and animals, burlesque peasant killers of both sexes, victories and triumphal processions. The engravings share the same technique, size, and principles of composition. All scenes take place on the same long stage with a dark background.

Both the subject and composition of this print are ultimately derived from ancient art, particularly the sculpture of Greek and Roman battle sarcophagi and the relief panels of triumphal arches and other memorials. Important Roman examples of the latter have been preserved on French soil in Provence. Also based on ancient models, and much closer to Delaune's period, are the pictorial compositions (and particularly the prints) of fifteenth-century Italian masters such as Andrea Mantegna and Antonio Pollaiuolo and sixteenth-century examples such as Raphael and Giulio Romano (translated into prints by Marcantonio Raimondi and others). Even closer to Delaune's print, both in time and place, are works on the theme of combat by contemporaries such as Léon Davent, Antonio Fantuzzi, and Jean Mignon.

The engravings of this suite all show a symmetrical balancing of the oblong compositions around a central point. The figures are rendered light against a dark background, giving them the salient and vital quality that Leonardo da Vinci advised such a procedure would produce in his Trattato della pittura (Treatise on Painting). The definition of the forms and their combination confer the presence of a relief. The delicacy of Delaune's burin work is particularly evident in this engraving, with its silky contour lines, the precise flicks of the needle that give substance and texture, and the brilliantly sustained quality of the cross-hatching. The individual prints of this series possess a grace that is compellingly incongruous, given their subject matter. The cycle has the combination of thematic unity and inventive variety that gave so much pleasure to the Renaissance eye.

The work is signed at lower right with the artist's signature: Stephanus fecit. Robert-Dumesnil lists four states for these engravings, the first and second without the numbers in the lower right corner which appear on the third and fourth. The second and third states were printed by the publisher-dealer François Langlois and bear, on the first engraving of the suite only (RD 281), the inscription FL.D. Ciartres excud. The fourth state was printed in the eighteenth century by the son of the great collector and connoisseur Pierre-Jean Mariette, and the first print is inscribed P. Mariette le fils. In the opinion of Robert-Dumesnil the prints of the suite can be broken into two different campaigns of execution, with the present example falling into the larger group of eight. The indication at lower left of the protective royal privilege (Cum pri Regis) shows that the engravings were produced during Delaune's years in France.

Magnificent example belonging to the collection of Alexandre-Pierre-François Robert-Dumesnil, whose blind stamp in the lower center (Lugt 2200).

Bibliografia

A. P. F. Robert-Dumesnil, Le peintre-graveur français, (IX.88.284.I); G. A. Wanklyn, The French Renaissance in Prints from the Biblioteque Nationale de France, pp. 358-359; Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier, in Fontainebleau et l'estampe en France au XVI siècle: Iconographie et contradictions, exh. cat. (Nemours: Château-Musée Ville de Nemours, 1985), p. 145ff.