Minerva

Plate taken fom the monumental Academia Todesca della Architectura, Scultura & Pittura: oder Teutsche Academie der Edlen Bau, Bild-und Mahlerey-Künste (Deutsche Academy of Architecture - Sculpture – Painting). 

The first edition, in German, was published by Joachim von Sandrart in Nuremberg, in three volumes respectively in 1675, 1679 and 1680.
For the plates Sandrart used his students as and many others artist as Karl Gustav von Amling (1650-1703); Philip Kilian (1628-1693); Richard Collin (1627-97); Georg Andreas Wolfgang (1631-1716); Johann Georg Waldreich (d.1680); Melchior Küsel (1626-1683); Franck, Johann (fl.1659-1690); George Christoph Eimmart (1638-1705); Susanna Maria von Sandrart (1658-1716); Bartholomäus Kilian (1630-1696).

The work is full of illustrations of ancient and modern Roman buildings, sculpture, the theory of painting, biographies of artists, including German and contemporary (ie seventeenth-century) artists, and antiquities.

Joachim von Sandrart was a painter of some note but it is for his Teutsche Academie that he is chiefly remembered. His compendious treatise includes sections on ancient sculpture and architecture, perspective, the theory of painting, artists’ biographies, a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and so on. The second part of Book I purports to give a history of art from its earliest origins, and opens with an engraving of two scenes of legendary accounts of the discovery of drawing.

The frontispiece to Volume I is signed as drawn by J. de Sandrart and engraved by C.G. Amling; that of Volume II is signed as drawn by Sandrart and engraved by R. Collin. The portrait in Volume I is signed as painted by J.U. Mair and engraved by P. Kilian; that in Volume II is signed as engraved by R. Collin. Many plates are signed as drawn by Sandrart and engraved by R. Collin or other engravers (J. Franck, G.A. Wolfgang, J.G. Waldreich, I.I. Thourneyser, Melchior Küsell, G. C. Eimmart, B. Kilian, Jacob Sandrart, Joh. Meyer, Susanna von Sandrart, J.A. Boener, C. Meyer). Many plates are unsigned.

The work is dedicated to the world-renowned German nation and to champions and lovers of art ('Der Welt-berühmten Teutschen Nation ... Kunst-Helden und Kunstliebenden').

Etching with margins, very good condition.

References

National Gallery (Washington), Mark J. Millard, III (1998), no. 111; F.W. H. Hollstein, German engravings ... ca. 1400-1700 (1954-), 38-41; Anna Schreurs, Unter Minerva schutz: bildung durch kunst in Joachim von Sandrarts 'Teutscher Academie' (2012).