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Print

ca. 1573 (published)
Artist/Maker
Vredeman De Vries, Hans (designer)
Lafrery, Antonio (publisher)
Place of origin
Rome (published)

This print depicts a strapwork cartouche. Strapwork is a type of decoration which mimics the appearance of curled and intertwined bands of a flat material such as leather or sheet metal. Its origins are in early 16th century Italian art, but the design was also popular throughout Northern Europe from about 1535-1630. A cartouche is an elaborately decorated frame which can contain words, a picture or, as in this print, be left blank. The unknown Italian engraver of this print copied it from one designed by the Netherlandish artist Hans Vredeman de Vries, which had been published 18 years earlier in 1555, in Antwerp.

Object details

Categories
Prints
Ornament Prints
Object type
Print
Materials and techniques
Engraving on paper
Paper
Ink
Engraving
Brief description
Anonymous Italian engraving after Hans Vredeman de Vries of a cartouche, published by Antonio Lafrery, Italian, ca. 1573.
Physical description
Horizontal cartouche, top centre a dog's mask, top left and right a dog peeping out of a pipe. Copy of Fuhring (1997), 21.
Dimensions
  • Plate height: 13.7cm
  • Plate width: 18.8cm
Style
Renaissance
Marks and inscriptions
Numbered 8.
Object history
From Miller (1999):
[These prints] form part of the Lafrery Volume and correspond to the entry Libro di diuersi [diversi] compartimenti in Lafrery's stocklist of c. 1573 (Ehrle, p.59).
Subjects depicted
Cartouche
Strapwork
Dog
Pipe
Mask
Summary
This print depicts a strapwork cartouche. Strapwork is a type of decoration which mimics the appearance of curled and intertwined bands of a flat material such as leather or sheet metal. Its origins are in early 16th century Italian art, but the design was also popular throughout Northern Europe from about 1535-1630. A cartouche is an elaborately decorated frame which can contain words, a picture or, as in this print, be left blank. The unknown Italian engraver of this print copied it from one designed by the Netherlandish artist Hans Vredeman de Vries, which had been published 18 years earlier in 1555, in Antwerp.
Bibliographic references
  • Fuhring, P., Hollstein's Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, Volume XLVI, I Vredeman de Vries, Part I, 1555-1571, Rotterdam, 1997, no.s 14-26, copy 1.
  • Ornament and Architecture: Renaissance Drawings, Prints and Books, Exhibition Catalogue, Brown University, Bell Gallery, List Art Center, Providence, Rhode Island, 1980, 86, as Hans Vredeman de Vries.
  • Miller, E., 16th-century Italian ornament prints in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1999, p. 45 (cat. 5).
  • Miller, E., A Reassembled Volume of Sixteenth-century Italian Ornament Prints Published by Antonio Lafrery (forthcoming).
  • Miller, E., 16th-century Italian ornament prints in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1999, pp. 126-31 (cat. 39).
  • Elizabeth Miller, 'Antonio Lafreri's architecture and ornament volumes: Crossing the boundary between books and volumes of prints in late sixteenth-century Rome', Renaissance Studies, 33 (2019), 761- 788
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
E.2033-1899

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Record createdMarch 5, 2004
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O96331/print-vredeman-de-vries/
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