ANONYMOUS, after Giorgio VASARI (1511 - 1574), published by Hieronymus COCK (1518 - 1570): Portrait of Six Italian Writers - c. 1550

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Engraving, 407 x 294 mm. Riggs 195, Le Blanc 93.

Extremely rare impression with an engraved text printed under the portraits. We have not found this text on any of the very rare impressions that we know of. Timothy Riggs describes only one impression, which is without letter; he seems to ignore this letter, and the dimensions mentioned are reduced to 331 x 289 mm.

One of the British Museum impressions has a blank space below the image, but it is not high enough to accommodate the entire text of our impression, which is the only one we know of where the plate is fully visible and the sheet untrimmed.

The text of our impression and the borders, which extend  below the plate, were most likely typeset and printed in the blank space below the image.

There is an awkward copy, also very rare,  which includes an engraved letter that is roughly similar to ours. See the impression preserved at the Royal Collection Trust.

Very fine impression printed on laid paper. In very good condition. Three tiny pinholes. Thread margins all around the platemark.

‘This print is based on a painting by Giorgio Vasari for the humanist Luca Martini in 1544. The painter mentions the work in the second edition of the Vite, specifying that copies had been made. The best surviving version - probably the one painted for Martini - is now in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts’. (Cécile Tainturier, in Hieronymus Cock, La Gravure à la Renaissance, p. 145, translated by us).

This painting depicts Guido Cavalcanti (1258-1300), Boccaccio (1313-1375) and Petrarch (1304-1374) surrounding Dante Alighieri (1265/67-1321). The four poets are crowned with laurel. On the far left of the painting, Cristoforo Landino (1425-1498), humanist and promoter of the Italian language, and Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), Italian poet and philosopher, observe their illustrious elders. In the engraving, Landino's name has been replaced by that of his contemporary Ange Politien (1454-1494), another poet and philologist. Cécile Tainturier sees this as a mistake on the part of the draughtsman, who provided the printmaker with a preparatory drawing, or as a strategic choice on the part of the publisher, since Ange Politien ‘had been published since the beginning of the 16th century in Antwerp - notably by Plantin - and was perhaps more significant for Cock’. (Hieronymus Cock, La Gravure à la Renaissance, p. 145, translated by us).

This group portrait ‘reflects the debates between humanists in Florence over proper usage in the Tuscan language, the relative merits of Petrarch and Dante as exemplars, and the contending Aristotelian and Neoplatonic interpretations of Dante’s poetry’ (Sharon Gregory, Vasari and the Renaissance Print, p. 300)

The popularity of the painting, of which several copies were soon painted, led to the creation of two engraved versions, one published by Cock, the other probably Italian. Sharon Gregory emphasises the high artistic quality of the version published by Cock, which was clearly copied by the second version: ‘The features of the poets and their attributes, as presented in Vasari’s painting, are rendered by the engraver with great accuracy and subtlety, and the inscriptions identifying them are clear, with the letters well formed’ (ibid., p. 300)

It is very possible that it was Vasari himself who provided Cock with a preparatory drawing for the engraving, since, as Sharon Gregory points out in Vasari and the Renaissance Print, the sign of Capricorn was added to the engraving on the celestial sphere. Capricorn was the astrological sign used as a personal emblem by Cosimo I of Tuscany, whose patronage Vasari was seeking at the time.

It is thought to be one of the first prints published by Cock around 1550. The plate is mentioned in the inventory of the estate of his widow, Volcxken Diericx, in 1601: Een coperen plaete van ses Philosophen.

References: Timothy A. Riggs: Hieronymus Cock: 1510-1570, Printmaker and publisher in Antwerp at the sign of the four winds, 1977; Joris Van Grieken, Ger Luijten, Jan van der Stock, Alessandra Baroni Vannucci: Hieronymus Cock : la gravure à la Renaissance, 2013.