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BOL, Hans (artist; 1534-1593); Adriaen COLLAERT (engraver; c.1560-1618).] Emblemata evangelica ad XII signa coelestia . [Antwerp:] Jan Sadeler 1585.
BOL, Hans (artist; 1534-1593); Adriaen COLLAERT (engraver; c.1560-1618).] Emblemata evangelica ad XII signa coelestia . [Antwerp:] Jan Sadeler 1585. THE COMPLETE SERIES OF THIRTEEN ORIGINAL DRAWINGS FOR THE EMBLEMATA EVANGELICA BY HANS BOL TOGETHER WITH THE PLATES ENGRAVED BY ADRIAEN COLLAERT The drawings in pen and brown ink, traces of black chalk, brown wash, brown ink framing lines, signed ‘HBol 1585’ (January and February), signed ‘Hans Bol/ 1585’ (March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November) and signed ‘Hans Bol/ 15845 [sic.] (143 x 210mm); engravings trimmed to platemark (150 x 208mm), some with 19th-century numbering in pencil. (Occasional small, light stain in engraving.) Each drawing and engraving mounted on wove paper (no visible watermark) within brown ink framing line, bound and interleaved to 4o (337 x 280mm) in early 19th-century maroon straight-grained morocco tooled in gilt and blind, Spencer-Churchill arms at centre of both covers, spine lettered in gilt, gilt edges (minor bumping or rubbing). Provenance : George Spencer Churchill, Marquess of Blandford, later 5th Duke of Marlborough (1766-1840; binding; sale, Evans, White Knights Library, 7-19 June 1819, lot 562, 31gns. 10s. to Jeffery) – A.H. Bright (1912 bookplate; manuscript addition to his printed catalogue of 1913). This album contains the complete and previously unpublished set of preparatory drawings for the Emblemata Evangelica: a series of prints designed by Hans Bol engraved by Adriaen Collaert and published by Johannes Sadeler (1550-1600). Complete series of print designs by Bol are extremely rare and, in the present case, the album includes not only the drawings for the twelve months in the series, but also the design for the frontispiece and an impression of each of the related prints, mounted opposite its preparatory study. Hans Bol was born in Mechelen, where the Archduchess Margaret of Parma had established her court as Governor of the Netherlands, and which had consequently developed a flourishing artistic community. Following decades of increased religious tensions, Mechelen declared itself for the Protestant rebel William of Orange, a decision that led to a brutal sacking of the city by Spanish troops in October 1572. Having lost everything, Bol moved to Antwerp, where he already had contacts with printmakers and publishers such as Hieronymus Cock for whom he had already provided print designs in 1561-62. He remained there until 1584, when he was once again forced to flee ahead of the Spanish army. For some years he moved between Bergen-op-Zoom, Dordrecht and Delft, before finally settling in Amsterdam. He was celebrated by his contemporaries for his imaginative small-scale works, which show extensive landscapes dotted with Gothic castles and mansions. His exquisite work as a miniaturist in Les Heures du Duc d’Alencon, an illuminated manuscript (1582, BnF), highlights Bol’s delight in detail and ornament. The Emblemata Evangelica series was executed in 1585 with all the accomplished intricacy of Bol’s mature style. Each drawing is signed and dated, and the artist appears to have started with the month of December, which is dated in the unusual form ‘15845’. He had already collaborated with Collaert on a closely comparable series of prints five years earlier: The Twelve Months, for which the complete set of preparatory drawings also survives, in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (see Bosch to Bloemaert: Early Netherlandish Drawings in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, exhib. cat., Paris, Fondation Custodia, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, and Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, 2014, no. 32). That series of twelve roundels adopted the medieval tradition, established in books of hours, of showing each month or season with its associated labours and, unlike the present Emblemata Evangelica series, it is a purely secular cycle. While the Emblemata Evangelica series retains