Emperor Maximilian I and his wife, Mary of Burgundy
Emperor Maximilian and Mary
“I’m beyrischen Krueger vil schloss..”
231mm × w 151mm
Bartsch 138; Meder 251; The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates this woodcut to 1515.
Production of the Arch of Honor was essentially completed by 1515 but was delayed in release while Maximilian ordered his court historians to add further research into his purported early ancestry. Only a small number of proofs were completed before the emperor’s death, so most of the early printings of complete sets of the Arch were only made and distributed by his grandson Ferdinand I in 1526. Another edition appeared from the Habsburgs in 1559.
Woodcut by Albrecht Durer; German Prose; printed by Hieronymus Andreae.
Woodcut 17 from the first edition of the Ehrenpforte Maximilian.
Extremely rare detail plate of the triumphal arch of emperor Maximilian I.
Woodcut in black on fine laid paper.
Extremely fine and contrast rich impression.
Edges with old and very neat backing. Minor paper thinning.
