Live Auction 14020Old Master Prints
MARTIN SCHONGAUER (CIRCA 1445-1491)
Lot 7

MARTIN SCHONGAUER (CIRCA 1445-1491)

Saint Michael slaying the Dragon

Closed25 January 2017

Price Realised

USD 211,500

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MARTIN SCHONGAUER (CIRCA 1445-1491)
Saint Michael slaying the Dragon
engraving, circa 1469-74, on laid paper, watermark Gothic P with Flower (Stogdon 20), a fine, clear and even impression, printing with light vertical wiping marks, trimmed on or just inside the platemark but retaining a fillet of blank paper outside the borderline, in very good condition
Sheet 164 x 115 mm.

Albertina, Vienna, with their duplicate stamp (Lugt 5 f); their sale, C. G. Boerner, Leipzig, 25-27 May 1925, lot 1270 (‘Äußerst seltenes Blatt in ausgezeichnetem Abdruck’) (1300 Mk.).
Gerhard Güttler (1889-1966), Berlin & Bad Tölz (Lugt 2807); his sale, C. G. Boerner, Leipzig, 7 May 1928, lot 1078.
Richard H. Zinser (circa 1883-1983), Forest Hills, New York (not in Lugt).
With Nicholas Stogdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985.

Specialist note

‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’ (Revelations 12:7-9)

Representing the eternal, and ultimately victorious, struggle of good over evil, Schongauer reduces his composition to the central protagonists. Saint Michael, representative of the heavenly hosts, stands upon a struggling but defeated Satan who is about it receive his coup de grâce. The composition is spare and elegant, the S-shaped curve of Saint Michael’s body leading the eye to the raised upper arm holding the lance, and the strong diagonal emphasizing the downward plunge of the impending blow.