Venus and Adonis
Rome: Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi, c1570. Engraving on cream laid paper with a large heraldic watermark, laid down to a cream laid paper matrix, 12 3/4 x 8 3/4 inches (324 x 222 mm), thread margins. In good condition with some minor uniform age tone and several light spots of discoloration, all consistent with age. A final, 7th state impression. With the Winfield Robbins circular collector's stamp in bluish-purple ink on the verso [Lugt 6309].
In this engraving by Giorgio Ghisi, after a design by his brother Teodoro, Adonis is shown twice. He receives adoration from Venus in a green bower while resting his foot on a boar's head. In the background near a bare tree, his dead body is nuzzled by the same boar.
A note on the provenance:
An heir to an Arlington family that had prospered in the poultry trade, Winfield Robbins was deeply attached to his hometown, now a suburb of Boston. During his travels in Europe, the collector amassed nearly 130,000 prints from the 19th and 20th centuries, consisting primarily of portraits. Between 1893 and 1901, Robbins made several successive donations of works from his collection to the Arlington library—a building whose construction he had personally overseen, funded by his aunt (the widow of Eli Robbins) in memory of her late husband. Prints, as well as rare books and paintings from his collection, enriched the library’s holdings. Shortly before the collector’s death in November 1910, the library inaugurated an exhibition of prints from his collection.
—Fritz Lugt.
Condition: Very good.
Item number: 2478
Price: $1,000.00
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