Friday, March 16, 2018

German Engravings of the 1520s by Monogrammist IB

Monogrammist IB
Bookplate for Willibald Pirckheimer
(The Heart forged by Hope, Envy, Tribulation, and Tolerance)
1529
engraving
British Museum

Willibald Pirckheimer (1470-1530) – Leading humanist in Nuremberg and close friend of Albrecht Dürer. Grew up in Eichstätt, went to Italy in 1488 to study law for seven years at the universities of Padua and Pavia. Created one of the finest libraries of the period, which was later sold by his descendant Hans Hieronymus Imhof in 1636 to Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (1586-1646).  Much ended up in the library of the Royal Society, which sold and dispersed it in the early 20th century (for shame!).

Monogrammist IB
Genius of History
ca. 1523-30
engraving
British Museum

Monogrammist IB
Bagpipe Player
ca. 1523-30
engraving
British Museum

Monogrammist IB
Woman and her Maid buying produce from Farmer
ca. 1523-30
engraving
British Museum

Monogrammist IB
Marcus Curtius leaping into the Chasm
1529
engraving
British Museum

Monogrammist IB
Three Putti with Armor
ca. 1523-30
engraving
British Museum

Monogrammist IB
Two Tritons fighting (with Nereid riders)
ca. 1523-30
engraving
British Museum

Monogrammist IB
Two Tritons fighting (with vase at center)
ca. 1523-30
engraving
British Museum

Monogrammist IB
Twelve Gladiators fighting
ca. 1523-30
engraving
British Museum

Monogrammist IB
Eleven Gladiators fighting
ca. 1523-30
engraving
British Museum

Monogrammist IB
Twenty Putti picking Grapes
1529
engraving
British Museum

Monogrammist IB
Triumph of Bacchus
1528
engraving
British Museum

Monogrammist IB
Satyr between two Dolphins
ca. 1523-30
engraving
British Museum

Monogrammist IB
Busts in Medallions supported by Satyrs
ca. 1523-30
engraving
British Museum

Water at Night

Not that I understand things.
Angels don't walk toward the ship, old engraving
where moon throws
a river of light, how angels would walk the ocean
if they wanted to walk.
They don't. They hover. A lot of space
between them and what
shines like waves. Which can't
be a choice, for angels or
the engraver who was in fact
Gustave Doré after sleeping off
the ancient mariner Coleridge left behind under
guilt and regret and an albatross's weight.
Which isn't much, but they are
big animals, four feet across counting
the wind involved
and rain. Doré waking to a room not
really of wings. I guess
a stirring, something in the black expanse
he hoped to razor into
the copper plate – no, a graver,
not a razor at all.
Beauty does terrify, a bare nothing
but stop. As in angels. Abrupt.
Still, to cut them their flight on metal
takes a while. His hands stiff,
Doré under a deadline no doubt like the small
endlessly later rest of us
do what we do and do until
it's not what we do.
Nevertheless, angels. Why did they
keep coming, one by one radiant
dark of a mind paused to
this most desolate given: water at night.
That it floods a future not
even in the picture.

– Marianne Boruch (2015), published in Poetry (Chicago)