print;
book-illustration
- Museum number
- 1911,0708.110
- Title
- Series: Apocalypse and Satirical Allegories on the Church
- Description
-
Allegory of the Emperor killing the Pope; a landscape, in the right foreground a tent with Roman Catholic clerics, outside the tent soldiers and the Emperor on horseback, attacking the Pope with a lance, the Pope collapsing onto a chest with indulgences, in the foreground a flag with the papal coat-of-arms on the ground, in the far background a scene of Elijah killing the pagan prophets of Baal; one of forty-eight woodcuts of the incomplete set 'Apocalypse and Satirical Allegories on the Church', without text or title-page, bound in one volume (BM 1911-7-8-103 to 150). 1548
- Production date
- 1548
- Dimensions
-
Height: 233 millimetres
-
Width: 162 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- This woodcut is part of a set which was commissioned by Palatine Count Ottheinrich in 1544. They were intended as illustrations to Sebastian Meyer's polemical commentary on the Apocalypse (first published in Latin in Zurich in 1539), translated from Latin into German by Laurentius Agricola in 1544. The series was never completed or published, but a manuscript of Agricola's work including 58 woodcuts has survived in Munich (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek). The manuscript shows that the woodcuts were meant to be viewed in pairs, with an illustration from the Apocalypse on the left, and a satire on the right, usually both images based on the same piece of text. The pairing is listed by Roettig.
The woodcut here is Roettig 12e and should be viewed together with 12d, Elijah killing the prophets of Ball, not in BM (see Hollstein 61).
For another impression of this print, see1853,1112.44.
For further details about Gerung's Apocalypse prints in the BM, see 1911,0708.103
Lit: C Dodgson, 'Eine Holzschnittfolge Matthias Gerung', Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen, XXIX, Berlin, 1908, pp.195ff (no.39); P. Roettig, Reformation als Apokalypse: Die Holzschnitte von Matthias Gerung im Codex germanicus 6592 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in München, Bern, 1991 (12e); G. Bartrum in F. Carey (ed) 'The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come' BM exhibition catalogue, 1999, no.59. On the 1637 album, see Ilja M. Veldman, "Portrait of an art collector: Pieter Spiering van Silvercroon" Simiolus 38:4 (2015/16): 246.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1911
- Acquisition notes
- The volume containing 1911,0708.103 through 150 is a historic item bound in black leather for Peter Spiering Silfvercrona, lettered in gold: APOCAL: GRVNE / WALT / 1637
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1911,0708.110