Ex-Libris of Hector Poemer

Reference: S10922
Author Hans Sebald BEHAM
Year: 1525
Measures: 197 x 295 mm
€2,500.00

Reference: S10922
Author Hans Sebald BEHAM
Year: 1525
Measures: 197 x 295 mm
€2,500.00

Description

The arms of Hector Pömer; an escutcheon with the Pömer arms and the gridiron of St Laurence, with crest, helm and mantling. Placed under an arch, St. Laurence standing on the left. In the four corners small escutcheons with the arms of Pömer, Rummel, Schmiedmaier and Bergmeister. Below a strip with a Hebrew, Greek and Latin motto and the name.

Woodcut signed R A and dated 1525 in the block. Below one line of Hebrew, one line of Greek and two lines of Latin. The Latin reading: OMNIAM MUNDA MUNDIS/ D. HECTOR POMER PRAEPOS S. LAUR.'

Magnificent work, particularly disputed, printed on contemporary laid paper with “shield with crown” watermark, with complete borderline, tiny restoration on the upper right corner, in excellent conditions.

The cataloguing of this work is extremely controversial; it has been first ascribed to Albrecht Durer by Bartsch; then to Hans Sebald Beham by Pauli. Zurwesten has lately included it again in Durer’s work, considering it the most important piece of the master in the field of ex-libris.

Nowadays, the experts agree that Durer himself prepared the drawing of this work, afterwards carved by Hieronymus Andreae Resch, as it is shown by the monogram “R A 1525” (Resch, year 1525). However, the work is assigned to Hans Sebald Beham in major museum collections (BM, Rijks Museum etc.).

In the northern Europe of the first Renaissance, a large group of artists was used to realize many ex-libris, much in demand among famous people to identify their possession of books and pieces of art. Starting from the year 1490, we have had many examples of the genre, mainly from the school of Nuremberg and particularly from the so-called Little Masters; their aesthetic qualities have had a great development in the years, increasing the number of ornaments and the perfection of the carving.

Hector Pomer was a Priest of the church of St. Laurence in Nuremberg; that is why here we find St. Laurence portrayed with the gridiron and the palm of martyrdom, according to the classical iconography.

Dodgson comments that the monogram RA has been associated with Hieronymus Andreae or Resch since the early nineteenth century, although it is not clear why Andreae should have chosen to sign with those initials.

For use as a bookplate, see O'Dell for earlier literature; also P.Youatt (ed) 'Introduction to Deutsche und Oesterreichische Exlibris 1500-1599' in The Bookplate Journal, Vol 11, no. 2, 2013, p. 109 and fig. 25.

Excellent work.

Bibliografia

Pauli 1901-11 / Hans Sebald Beham: Ein Kritisches Verzeichniss seiner Kupferstiche Radirungen und Holzschnitte (1352); Hollstein / German engravings, etchings and woodcuts c.1400-1700 (1352); Dodgson 1903, 1911 / Catalogue of Early German and Flemish Woodcuts in the BM, 2 vols (I.484.159); Bartsch / Le Peintre graveur (VII.169.163); O'Dell 2003 / Deutsche und österreichische Exlibris 1500-1599 im Britischen Museum (304); Bilder-Katalog zu Max Geisberg, der deutsche Einblatt-Holzschnitt in der 1. Hälfte des XVI. Jahrhunderts : 1600 verkleinerte Wiedergaben, cat.nr. 316.

Hans Sebald BEHAM Nuremberg 1500 - Frankfurt 1550

Engraver, etcher, designer of woodcuts and stained glass, painter and illustrator. In contemporary documents and prints he was nearly always identified as Sebald Beham although since the 17th century (Sandrart) and into the early years of the 20th he has mistakenly been called Hans Sebald Beham on the basis of his monogram: HSP or HSB. This reflects S[ebald] Peham/Beham with the P (Nuremberg pronunciation) changing to B c. 1531, when he appears to have moved to Frankfurt. Sandrart’s biography of him is illustrated with a printed portrait similar to Sebald’s painted Self-portrait in his David panel in the Louvre; around the Sandrart portrait is an inscription identifying him as painter and engraver. Only one of Sebald’s panel paintings has survived (the Story of David, 1534; Paris, Louvre), though documents cited by Hampe and Vogler refer to him as a journeyman for painting in 1521 and as having his own journeyman—i.e. running a workshop—in 1525. Sebald is best known to posterity, however, for his prints, of which he produced a prodigious quantity: approximately 252 engravings, 18 etchings and 1500 woodcuts, including woodcut book illustrations. Biographical information is scanty: Sandrart alleged that he was trained by Barthel and opened a tavern, the bad reputation of which derived from his own dissolute life. Unquestionably, however, he was industrious and meticulous artistically. He began producing prints in quantity in 1519, though a few date to before then: a woodcut of Lust from a series of the Ten Commandments—a youthfully naive work produced in 1512 when Sebald was 12—and a sheet of sometimes awkwardly drawn pen-and-ink studies of male and female heads on red prepared paper (1518; Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.). His first engraving, dated 1518, is a diminutive Portrait of a Young Woman.

Hans Sebald BEHAM Nuremberg 1500 - Frankfurt 1550

Engraver, etcher, designer of woodcuts and stained glass, painter and illustrator. In contemporary documents and prints he was nearly always identified as Sebald Beham although since the 17th century (Sandrart) and into the early years of the 20th he has mistakenly been called Hans Sebald Beham on the basis of his monogram: HSP or HSB. This reflects S[ebald] Peham/Beham with the P (Nuremberg pronunciation) changing to B c. 1531, when he appears to have moved to Frankfurt. Sandrart’s biography of him is illustrated with a printed portrait similar to Sebald’s painted Self-portrait in his David panel in the Louvre; around the Sandrart portrait is an inscription identifying him as painter and engraver. Only one of Sebald’s panel paintings has survived (the Story of David, 1534; Paris, Louvre), though documents cited by Hampe and Vogler refer to him as a journeyman for painting in 1521 and as having his own journeyman—i.e. running a workshop—in 1525. Sebald is best known to posterity, however, for his prints, of which he produced a prodigious quantity: approximately 252 engravings, 18 etchings and 1500 woodcuts, including woodcut book illustrations. Biographical information is scanty: Sandrart alleged that he was trained by Barthel and opened a tavern, the bad reputation of which derived from his own dissolute life. Unquestionably, however, he was industrious and meticulous artistically. He began producing prints in quantity in 1519, though a few date to before then: a woodcut of Lust from a series of the Ten Commandments—a youthfully naive work produced in 1512 when Sebald was 12—and a sheet of sometimes awkwardly drawn pen-and-ink studies of male and female heads on red prepared paper (1518; Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.). His first engraving, dated 1518, is a diminutive Portrait of a Young Woman.