- 16
Hans Johann Rottenhammer the Elder
Description
- Hans Johann Rottenhammer the Elder
- The Virgin and St. Anne with the Christ Child and St. John the Baptist
- Pen and brown ink and wash, over black chalk, heightened with white, within black ink framing lines
- 16.2 x 20.1cm.
Provenance
probably his sale, Vienna, 5 February 1872;
Heinrich Schwarz (L.1372),
by inheritance until sale, New York, Sotheby's, 12 January 1994, lot 7;
with Jean-Luc Baroni, London
Catalogue Note
This emphasis on modelling is notably paralleled in the magnificent drawing of The Raising of Lazarus, at Chatsworth, which was probably executed a little after 1600, and may well have been made specifically as the modello for the fine engraving, in reverse, by Raphael Sadeler.1 Also close in some respects is the drawing of Venus, Mars and Vulcan, in Berlin, which may have been made in connection with two painted versions of the same subject, one dated 1604, the other executed around the same time or slightly later.2 It therefore seems most likely that Rottenhammer drew this depiction of The Virgin and St. Anne with the Christ Child and St. John the Baptist, which cannot be connected with any known painting, in the first years of the 17th century, shortly before he returned from Italy to his native Germany.
1. Chatsworth, The Devonshire Collection, inv. 692; Hans Rottenhammer, begehrt - vergessen - neu entdeckt, exhib. cat., Schloss Brake, Weserrenaissance-Museum, and Prague, Nationalgalerie, 2008-9, p. 57, figs. 93-4
2. Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. KdZ 10477; Hans Rottenhammer.. exh. cat., op. cit., 2008-9, no. 70