print;
ornament print;
frontispiece
- Museum number
- 1869,0410.1516
- Title
- Series: Compartments after Battini
- Description
-
Plate 1: Frontispiece with cartouche surrounded by skulls and bones; series of quotations and mediations by various classical and other authors; from a series of 28 engravings. 1553
Engraving
- Production date
- 1553
- Dimensions
-
Height: 170 millimetres
-
Width: 117 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- This is the frontispiece to a series of twenty-eight numbered plates after Battini, attributed to Pieter van der Heyden. For an almost compete set, see 1869,0410.1516-1541 (plate 21 lacking). The designs were meant as patterns for frames in which to place texts in epitaphs, on tombs, in maps or in stained glass windows.
The Florentine painter mentioned on the frontispiece, Benedictus Battini, is further unknown. The ornamental scrollwork was called 'beslagwerk' in the Netherlands from the verb 'beslagen' for beating metalwork. The Italian translation would be 'battere' and it is not unlikely that the name of the painter is in fact a rebus, a wordplay popular with the publisher Hieronymus Cock.
Literature: T. Riggs, Hieronymus Cock, Printmaker and Publisher', New York and London, 1977, p.311; P. Fuhring, in J. van Grieken - G. Luijten - J. van der Stock, "Hieronymus Cock: The Renaissance in Print", exh.cat. Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels and Fondation Custodia in Paris, New Haven and London, 2013, cat.no.77.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1869
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1869,0410.1516