- Museum number
- SL,5218.207
- Description
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Design for a seal of Cardinal Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg; whole-length standing figure of an angel holding a cross staff, below a shield of arms flanked by tassels, all framed within a pointed oval
Pen and brown ink, with grey wash, heightened with white bodycolour (some of which has oxidised), on brownish-pink prepared paper
- Production date
- 1519 (post)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 142 millimetres
-
Width: 88 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Rowlands 1993
LITERATURE: Th. Musper, OMD, viii, 1933, pp. 30-31, pl. 34; BM Dürer and Holbein, pp. 208-10, no. 177, repr.
This design was executed for Matthäus Lang (1468-1540), the leading diplomat and chief counsellor of the Emperor Maximilian, after 24 September 1519, for on the following day he was consecrated archbishop in the cathedral at Salzburg, the earliest occasion when he had the right to quarter his arms with those of the see of Salzburg as displayed on the drawing. The seal itself, however, was only for use outside the archdiocese, because the figure of the angel holding the cross-staff refers to Lang's cardinalate with the titular church of S. Angeli in Foro Piscium in Rome. He had been appointed cardinal in petto by Pope Julius II on 10 March 1511, and his creation as cardinal deacon followed on 24 November 1512; in 1514, as Bishop of Gurk, he was elected to the Chapter of Salzburg Cathedral as coadjutor of the ruling Archbishop Leonhard van Keutschaeh, with the right to be his follower.
Although the drawing has remained in the BM collection under the broad classification of 'South German School XVI century', Musper's attribution to the Petrarch Master, who is now generally accepted as Hans Weiditz, ought to be given further consideration. The Augsburg publishers Dr Sigismund Grimm and Marx Wirsung became important employers of the Petrarch Master in the year before Lang became archbishop of Salzburg. The cardinal's patronage was recognised by them, through the inclusion in woodcuts of his arms quartered with those of Salzburg, as in the drawing. It appeared together with the arms of Wirsung on the title-page of the German translation of the Spanish tragedy ‘Celestine’, published at Augsburg on 20 December 1520. This support from Lang had been given a month earlier, a spectacular acknowledgement, with the inclusion of the publisher's dedication to him of a large woodcut similarly designed by the Master, of Lang's arms again quartered with Salzburg in Ludwig Senfl's ‘Liber Selectarum Cantionum . . .’ , the first German printed anthology of motets. This colour print is only to be found in copies in the libraries at Stuttgart, and Porrentruy and on a loose sheet in the British Museum (Dodgson, ii, 181.137).
There are also stylistic grounds for attributing the seal-design to the Petrarch Master. The comparison suggested by Musper between the angel in the drawing and the woodcut of St Michael, evidently from the years 1519/20 (Musper, ‘Petrarkameister’, p. 50, no. 428) is, however, less compelling than one with the figures of the evangelists, within the niches of the architectural frame of the woodcut of 1521, ‘The Virgin standing on the crescent moon’ (Friedländer, ‘Weiditz’, pp. 2, 13). The similarity of the stance of the figure and the features is particularly marked in the case of St John.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1753
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- SL,5218.207
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: C,07.207
