A Young Man and Woman Each Holding An Apple
A Florentine engraving in the Fine Manner, attributed
to the school of Finiguerra
“One of the “Otto Prints” (so called from the eighteenth-century collector who possessed the majority of the series), A Young Man and Woman Each Holding An Apple, is in the Gray Collection, Harvard, and it is a charming example of the amatory subjects of the series, prints such as the Florentine gallant might have pasted on the spice-box to be presented to his inamorata. The badge of Medici (the six “palle” with three lilies in the uppermost) added by a contemporary hand in pen and ink suggests that this one may have been used by the young Lorenzo himself between about 1465 and 1467, which accords well with the probable date of the engravings.” Arthur M. Hind.
(The inscription above reads ò amore te qª (questa) and
piglia qª: “O Love, this to you” and “Take this.”)
Size of the original engraving, 4¼ × 4¼ inches
The engravings most certainly by Finiguerra, such as the Judgment Hall of Pilate (Gotha), the March to Calvary and the Crucifixion (British Museum), Various Wild Animals Hunting and Fighting (British Museum), are of course rarities which most collectors can never hope to possess. The same may also be said of somewhat later prints in the same manner of engraving (which may be the work of the heirs of Finiguerra’s atelier, which is known to have been carried on by members of his family until 1498), such as the Fine Manner “Prophets and Sibyls” and the “Otto Prints.” We will in consequence devote less space to these rarities, possessed chiefly by a few European collections, than their artistic interest would justify, keeping our argument henceforward more to the engravings that the American amateur has the chance of seeing or acquiring at home.
One of the “Otto Prints” (so called from the eighteenth-century collector who possessed the majority of the series), A Young Man and Woman Each Holding An Apple, is in the Gray Collection, Harvard, and it is a charming example of the amatory subjects of the series, prints such as the Florentine gallant might have pasted on the spice-box to be presented to his inamorata. The badge of Medici (the six “palle” with three lilies in the uppermost) added by a contemporary hand in pen and ink suggests that this one may have been used by the young Lorenzo himself between about 1465 and 1467, which accords well with the probable date of the engravings.
The only known engraving by the goldsmith and painter Antonio Pollaiuolo, the large Battle of Naked Men, shows a far greater artist than his slightly elder contemporary Finiguerra. They had both studied in the same workshop and probably continued a sort of partnership until Finiguerra’s death. Pollaiuolo’s draughtsmanship evinces a grip and intensity that Finiguerra entirely lacks in his somewhat torpid academic drawings, and it is seen at its best in this magnificently vigorous plate. An excellent impression, surpassed by few in the museums of Europe, is, I believe, in the collection of Mr. Francis Bullard of Boston.
Before leaving Florence for north Italy we would allude to that attractive engraver of the transition period, Cristofano Robetta. His art has lost the finest flavor of the primitive Florentine without having succeeded to the sound technical system of the contemporaries of Dürer, but it has a thoroughly individual though delicate vein of fancy. The Adoration of the Magi, one of his finest plates, is a free translation of a picture by Filippino Lippi in the Uffizi, but the group of singing angels is an addition of his own, and done with a true sense for graceful composition. Fine early impressions of this print are of course difficult to get, but it is perhaps the best known of Robetta’s works, because of the number of modern impressions in the market. The original plate (with the Allegory of the Power of Love engraved on the back) belonged to the Vallardi Collection in the early nineteenth century, and is now in the British Museum, happily safe from the reprinter.