38 / 218
36
●
ALBRECHT DÜRER
Ulrich Varnbüler
.
Chiaroscuro woodcut printed in ochre, brown and black on cream laid
paper, 1522. 430x325 mm; 17x12
7
/
8
inches, thread margins. A superb,
well-inked Meder IIIa impression with strong colors. Crescent
watermark (Meder 258). Ex-collection Cabinet Brentano-Birckenstock,
Vienna and Frankfurt (Lugt 345, verso); and Alfred Morrison (1821-
1897), London and Fonthill (Lugt 151, verso, this impression cited by
Lugt; Morrison’s sale at Sotheby’s, London, July 11-14, 1906, sold for
49 pounds).
The original, extremely scarce lifetime impressions were printed in black
from the line block. It was only in the early 1600s that there was a
resurgence of attention paid to Dürer’s work and the chiaroscuro blocks
were created partly to mask wear to the original line block. Both this
portrait of Varnbüler and Dürer’s famous woodcut
The Rhinoceros
, 1515,
were printed as chiaroscuro woodcuts by the Amsterdam publisher
Willem Janssen; his name and address appear below the border line in
theVarnbüler portrait.
The drawing for which Dürer based this woodcut is in the collection
of the Albertina, Vienna. Around the early 1520s, Dürer completed
several portraits with the intent of producing woodcuts, though only
two subjects were realized:
Ulrich Varnbüler
and
Emperor Maximilian I
.
Both woodcuts are extremely scarce; we have found approximately only
11 impressions of each at auction in the past 30 years.
Strauss records only 11 chiaroscuro impressions of this woodcut in
museum collections, including an example at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New
York.Welocate only one impression with chiaroscuro at
auction in the past 30 years. Bartsch 155; Meder 256.
[40,000/60,000]