A Renaissance Masterpiece Discovered
ROMAN TEEVAN relates a nerve-jangling journey which ended happily.
Years ago, when my history professor introduced me, then a young
undergraduate, to the wonders of early printmakers working in Europe in the 15th and early 16th centuries (such as Schongauer, Durer, Altdorfer etc.), I had no idea that the work of such artists would change my life forever.
As a result of their work I wrote the first part of my thesis on the impact of the graven image on the Early Reformation. I had contracted the print disease! So virulent is that disease today, that I am fortunate enough (compelled probably) to work as a print dealer. This brings me into constant contact with the work of artists such as those I encountered when a student.
I cannot begin to tell you the excitement, the thrill, I get from tracking down interesting prints from this period by artists that have been so influential on the history of art. The graphic work produced by these great Old Masters had a profound effect on printmaking, which was then still in its experimental stages. The development of printmaking is fascinating, the stylistic-changes over the course of one hundred years remarkable. Technical achievements by artists (or peitre-graveurs) such as the refining of the woodcut by Durer, the mastery of engraving by Schongauer, the invention of etching by Daniel Hopfer and its subsequent painterly development by the great artist Francesco Mazzola, known as Parmigianino (1503-1540), have left such a mark that the techniques used bv artists todav have changed little since their invention five centuries ago.
As an art historian I get great pleasure in researching my latest acquisitions, but though the hours spent in college libraries can lead to all sorts of discoveries, pitfalls abound. One such was The Lovers c. 1528 by Parmigianino, which I acquired in Germany in 1998.
It had me foxed! After paving a substantial sum for this etching (one of onlv 1 5 bv the great Renaissance master), I was faced with a huge problem. My print differed from all the illustrations I had seen. It was less fin¬ished than the examples in the British Museum, the Metropolitan in New York or the Graphik-Sammlung in Zurich. There were less etched lines in mine, leading nu to suspect that something was amiss. Added to this my print had pen and ink additions that corresponded to the missing lines I could see in the illustrations from the museum collections.
I began to think more and more about this little etching. I wondered whether or not it might be a very early impression, as an artist’s proof, or perhaps a complete fake! The more I thought about it, the more I scoured the library for information, the more baffled I became. Then it came to me as I was turning a page in a reference book. There was a mention of more than one state. That was what I was looking for. But there it ended. No description of differences between the states was forth¬coming. No further reference to the author’s source was cited. So what was I to do? Were the pen and ink lines drawn on my print put there by Parmigianino himself? I certainly hoped so.
Access to the right information was of paramount importance. It seemed that I had no other option but to go and locate other examples. So I flew to London to see Anthony Griffiths, Keeper of Prints & Drawings in the British Museum.
I arrived for my appointment to find that he had taken two impressions of the same print from the BM collection, one of which he believed to be a copy, the other the real thing. He explained to me that as far back as the 16th century they had the ability to copy images almost perfectly by a method that is now unknown to us. As an artist became more famous so did the demand for his work. Thus, there was a burgeoning trade in copies or outright forgeries. As previously stated, this was something that – had already crossed my mind ominously in my research. Upon seeing the genuine impression my heart somersaulted! What I had purchased a few months earlier was genuine.
Anthony Griffiths examined my print millimetre by millimetre and came to the same conclusion. He suggested that my print was indeed earlier than theirs and that the pen and ink alterations or additions were most likely to have been the result of the artist taking an impression and then working on this before returning to the copperplate. The effect of this was the production of a slightly different impression. This was great news!
Anthony Griffiths then put me in touch with another Parmigianino expert who was able to direct me to the location of the original drawing for this etching, the Albertina in Vienna. I then acquired an illustration of this drawing which tied up the final puzzle related to this print — why the area around the man’s face seemed abraded (blurred). The original drawing matches my print exactly in that the face is very loosely defined, which works in the drawing but not in the print. Hence the artist’s alterations.
The mystery was solved! All my early thoughts on this print had been confirmed. I had acquired what is a very important early impression of the third print Parmigianino ever made.
As AE Popham, a leading expert on the artist, considered that his prints were every bit as worthy of inclusion in the corpus of his drawings, this was a very important find indeed.
This story not only illustrates the pleasure that I get from my work but also the fantas¬tic opportunity for the print collector to acquire work by the greatest Renaissance Masters. Work by people like Michelangelo or Leonardo is beyond thereach of most pockets, but in the field of print collecting masterpieces like The Lovers
are still affordable. -
Ronan Teeven Caxton Antique Prints 63 Patrick Street Dublin 8
