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MASTER MZ (MATTHÄUS ZAISINGER)
The King’s Sons Shooting their Father’s Corpse
.
Engraving, circa 1500. 177x247 mm; 7x9
3
/
4
inches, thread margins. Indiscernible (eagle ?)
watermark. Ex-collection Nathaniel Smith, London, acquired from the Woodhouse sale,
1801, according to an inscription in ink, verso (Lugt 2297, verso). A very good, dark
impression of this extremely scarce engraving.
The subject of this engraving is not the
Martyrdom of St. Sebastian
, as Bartsch erroneously
identified it, but one based on a tale in the 13th-century
Gesta Romanorum
(see Shestack,
Fifteenth Century Engravings of Northern Europe
,Washington, DC, 1968, catalogue number 147).
Lehrs cites only approximately 25 impressions. Bartsch 4; Lehrs 21.
[3,000/5,000]
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