Live Auction 1139Old Master Prints
The Master FVB (active circa 1480-1500)
Lot 11

The Master FVB (active circa 1480-1500)

Saint Paul (B. 13; Lehrs 27)

Closed3 December 2013

Price Realised

GBP 10,000

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The Master FVB (active circa 1480-1500)
Saint Paul (B. 13; Lehrs 27)
engraving, circa 1490-1500, a superb impression of this very rare engraving, printing with exceptional contrasts and subtlety, with even the finest lines printing clearly, trimmed inside the platemark but retaining a fillet of blank paper outside the borderline on three sides, a skilfully made-up blank strip along the left sheet edge, just touching the hand and the guard and pommel of the sword, a repair at upper left, the subject otherwise in very good condition
S. 185 x 103 mm.

Albert van Loock (b. 1917), Brussels (L. 3751).

Specialist note

Given the stylistic similarities to the Flemish masters, in particular Dirk Bouts and Hans Memling, it is today generally agreed that the Master FVB was also a Fleming and that his monogram might stand for ‘F… van Bruges’. Technically certainly influenced by Schongauer, some of whose plates he copied, the Master FVB however developed a style of his own, characterized by a subtlety of shading and a statuesque quality in his figures unsurpassed until Leyden and Dürer. Max Lehrs considered him the finest of all Netherlandish engravers of the 15th century.