GERMAN SCHOOL, CIRCA 1600

This witty ‘Vexierbild’ (picture puzzle with a hidden face) is related to, and possibly based on, a woodcut attributed to Hans Meyer dated to around 1600 (V. Sgarbi, ‘Journey to the End of the Face’, in The Arcimboldo Effect. Transformations of the face from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, exhib. cat., Venice, Palazzo Grassi, 1987 p. 308, ill. p. 188; Mark McDonald, The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo. A Catalogue Raisonné. Series C. Prints. Part One. Ceremonies, Costumes, Portraits and Genre, I, London and Turnhout, 2017, no. 401, ill.). The lettering on the print attributes its design to Giuseppe Arcimboldo. The inscription on the drawing, dated 3 October 1597 in Strasbourg, indicates it is a sheet from an album amicorum owned by a young student from Wrocław, called Andreas Puecher; the inscription is signed – and the drawing was probably made – by a friend called Eggerdus à Kempen, recorded as Mayor of Danzig in 1620. The inscription on the verso, signed by Servatius Reichell, also a student at the university of Strasbourg, belongs to the drawing on the page it would have faced in the album amicorum.