print
- Museum number
- 1870,0625.1055
- Description
-
Decorative border panel; a flaming candelabra decorated with shells, swags and heads of putti. 1490-1500
Engraving
- Production date
- 1490-1500 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 221 millimetres
-
Width: 47 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- The print belongs to a series of fifteen engravings of the 'Life of the Virgin and Christ' executed in a style called by Hind the 'Broad Manner' and recently attributed to Francesco Rosselli; for a discussion of this group see the entry for Hind, B.I.1.II (1870-6-25-1048).
The engravings are followed by two additional plates of ornamental border panels intended to be cut and used to frame the individual scenes of the series. In Hamburg the narratives and their decorative borders from the first plate are mounted on canvas and lavishly hand-coloured (for the reproduction of the 'Resurrection' with its frame see Hind, plate 189).
The present impression belongs to the second plate of six border panels connected with an incomplete set of the narratives (mounted on wood blocks and richly hand-coloured) now in the Rothschild collection (Louvre, Paris); of the eleven impressions from this set, eight are complete with the decorative borders. The ornamental panels of the second plate are analogous to those of the first one, although the candelabra are thicker and more monumental, and the putti in two of the panels (like in the present one) have been added. For a reproduction of these second ornamental borders see Hind, plate 190.
As Zucker noted (in 'The Illustrated Bartsch, Commentary', vol. 24, part, 2, 1994, pp. 24-27, nos. 016-017), this type of ornamental designs were habitually used as framing devices in the borders of illuminated manuscripts, and the fanciful candelabra (especially the motif of the putti) are comparable in style to those appearing in the margins of several miniatures by or attributed to Rosselli himself.
Other border panels by Rosselli may have been used to frame the 'Triumphs of Petrarch' and other now lost series. The present panels or comparable, now lost, examples are recorded in two successives entries in the Rosselli inventory (1525), referring to "1 forma di fregio d'otone (brass), d'un foglio chomune"; and "1 forma di fregi di fogli chomuni, dopia".
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1870
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1870,0625.1055
