Graphiques antiques — 496. Auction Art & Interior: Fine Art
Albrecht Dürer, born on May 21, 1471 in Nuremberg, Germany, is widely regarded as the greatest German Renaissance painter. His contribution to painting and engraving is quite significant and has left a notable mark on the art world. Dürer's early life was spent in Nuremberg, a city that played a crucial role in his development as an artist and was also the site of his death on April 6, 1528. He was the son of the goldsmith Albrecht Dürer the Elder, from whom he initially learned the basics of drawing and metalworking.
Dürer's work is characterized by a combination of Gothic elements with the emerging Renaissance style, which is evident in his woodcuts and engravings. His oeuvre encompasses many themes, including religious works, altarpieces, portraits, and self-portraits. His outstanding prints, such as The Knight, Death and the Devil (1513), St. Jerome in his Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514), are known for their intricate detail and artistic skill. Dürer was also one of the earliest European landscape painters, as evidenced by his watercolor paintings.
Equally significant are his theoretical writings on mathematics, perspective, and ideal proportions in art. Dürer was not only an artist but also a keen intellectual, his interests encompassing various aspects of culture and science. He served as court painter to Holy Roman Emperors Maximilian I and Charles V, completing several significant art projects for them. Dürer's keen mind and versatile interests brought him into contact with the most prominent figures of his time, including theologians and scientists of the Reformation era.
Dürer's self-portraits are particularly famous, demonstrating not only his artistic skill but also his self-awareness and personal style. These portraits attest to his growing success and confidence as an artist. Dürer's legacy is immense; he influenced not only the art of his time, but also left an indelible mark on the history of European art.
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Abraham Ortelius (Ortels) was a Brabantian cartographer, geographer, and cosmographer. He is recognized as the creator of the first modern atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World). Along with Gemma Frisius and Gerardus Mercator, Ortelius is generally considered one of the founders of the Netherlandish school of cartography and geography. He was a notable figure of this school in its golden age (approximately 1570s–1670s) and an important geographer of Spain during the age of discovery. The publication of his atlas in 1570 is often considered as the official beginning of the Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography. He was the first person proposing that the continents were joined before drifting to their present positions. Beginning as a map-engraver, in 1547 he entered the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as an illuminator of maps. In 1560 when travelling with Mercator to Trier, Lorraine, and Poitiers, he seems to have been attracted, largely by Mercator's influence, towards the career of a scientific geographer. In 1564 he published his first map, Typus Orbis Terrarum, an eight-leaved wall map of the world. On 20 May 1570, Gilles Coppens de Diest at Antwerp issued Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the "first modern atlas" (of 53 maps).
Giovanni Ottaviani was an Italian painter and engraver who worked in Rome in the 18th century.
Ottaviani's most famous work is a series of panel plates from Raphael's loggia at the Vatican, published in the mid-1770s. The plates depict the "grotesque style" decorations made by Raphael and his assistants in the loggia of the Vatican Palace for Pope Leo X (1475-1521) in 1515-1519. More than 200 years later, the engravers Giovanni Ottaviani and Giovanni Volpato (1740-1803) were commissioned by Pope Clement XIII (1693-1769) to print a series of copperplate engravings based on Raphael's Loggia.
Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an 18th-century Italian painter, engraver, architect, and archaeologist who represented Neoclassicism and Romanticism. He was famous for creating a lot of original etchings with images of antique architecture monuments.
Giovanni Piranesi created hundreds of drawings and drafts in which he depicted the reconstructed ruins of ancient Roman buildings. His works are still used as teaching aids in the education of architectural students in many prestigious European universities. Piranesi periodically printed voluminous books with dozens of his own engravings depicting modified ancient architectural masterpieces - "graphic fantasies". His works were in demand among professional architects, who borrowed Piranesi's original ideas for their designs.
The peak of Piranesi's career came in the 1760s when, in recognition of his merits, he became an honorary member of the Guild of St. Luke and received from the Pope the title of Knight of the Golden Spur.
More than 700 of the master's original etchings have survived, printed in scholarly works.
