Cristoforo BERTELLI: Le Bararie del Mondo [World’s trickery] - c. 1560

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Engraving, 386 x 514 mm. Mentioned by Rigoli and Savarese but undescribed. Omodeo 9.

Very fine impression printed on laid paper with watermark (ladder inside a coat of arms topped by a star, similar to Briquet 5927, maybe the variant of this watermark, appearing on paper used in Firmi around 1559). Impression trimmed on the borderline and 1 mm inside the borderline along the left upper edge. Generally in good condition.

Here is a veritable court of miracles, haunted by all manners of characters, at varying levels of poverty or trickery: beggars soliciting passersby, street peddlars, acrobats, tricksters, actors on boards, freaks or cripples showing off their deformities, a Gipsy woman holding her baby in her arms. At the top of the engraving, in the middle, a caption represents the Greek god Momus, the jester of the Olympus, pointing an accusing finger at Hermes, god of traders and travellers, but also of thieves and liars.

Momus is a recurring character in Renaissance literature: Erasmus mentions him in his Praise of Folly (1511), the Italian humanist writer Leon Battista Alberti dedicates a satire poem to the god, under the title Momus (1520), in which he mingles with humans and from them learns to become « an expert in deceitful tricks and lies » (Cymbalum Mundi, 2000, p. 331).

The theme of the World's Deceits was a favourite theme in Italian engraving from the 16th to the 19th century. Cristoforo Bertelli's engraving is one of the prototypes that Rigoli and Savarese quote as a reference regarding other prints on the same topic.

Rare.

References: Rigoli and Savarese: Fuoco, acqua, cielo, terra : Stampe popolari profane della « Civica Raccolta Achille Bertarelli », Diakronia, 1995. A. Omodeo, Mostra di Stampe popolari venete dell'500, Firenze, 1965.

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