This lot is offered without reserve.

A scholar of Philology and Medieval Literature, Eric Stanley (1923-2018) became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford in 1977, a post he held until his retirement in 1991. He first came to Oxford in 1941, where he had won a scholarship to University College from Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School in Blackburn, Lancashire, having arrived with his parents as a refugee from Nazi Germany in 1934. His first teaching post was at Birmingham University, from 1951. Here he was proud to become a close friend of Ellis Waterhouse, Professor of Fine Art at the University and Director of the Barber Institute, an art historian of huge range and originality who helped develop Eric’s burgeoning interest in art and influenced his decision to start a collection. Eric and his wife, Mary Bateman, a practising neurologist of distinction, had received a modest legacy which they put to good use. A first-time visitor admitted to the Stanley houses in Oxford, the one separated from the other by some distance in the same Walton Street terrace, was in for a very pleasant surprise, if he or she was responsive to prints and drawings. Here were displayed the fruits of some fifty years of collecting by husband and wife. The earliest serious purchases seem to have been made in 1966, as attested by invoices and receipts from Colnaghi’s in Bond Street; two modestly priced drawings bought for them on commission at Sotheby’s for £102 10 s, followed in November of that year by three drawings at Christie’s described as Polidoro da Caravaggio which were subsequently identified as by a quite different artist, Giulio Campi, and were sold in these rooms in July 2019 as part of a first selection of drawings from the collection. This would have tickled Eric, as evidence for his frequently aired – with a humorous look – suspicion that cataloguers, even respected art historians, were all too inclined to make ambitious or simply inaccurate claims for the works they were describing. The Stanleys wished to follow their own judgment and make their own choices, with an enthusiasm tempered by some of the scepticism which Eric brought to his own scholarly research. In their earlier years as collectors, they preferred to use dealers to bid for them at auction, and in particular Arthur Driver and Katharina Mayer at Colnaghi’s, who ran the print department there and became friends, and understandably encouraged them to branch out into prints as well as drawings. While quite comfortably off, the Stanleys had severe limitations on their budget. They quickly realized that they could afford drawings of the middle rank but not by the great artists of the Italian Renaissance whom they most admired. They could, however, pursue engravings, etchings and woodcuts by or after these masters, and this accounts for the large number of prints they owned after Michelangelo, Raphael, Giulio Romano, Parmigianino, Primaticcio and other favourites. Three distinct groups of prints thus form the core of the collection: the engravings of Marcantonio Raimondi and his school, including Marco Dente and Nicolas Beatrizet; Italian chiaroscuro woodcuts; and etchings from the School of Fontainebleau. These are complemented by some of the more eccentric and often rare examples of Italian and Northern mannerist prints, as well as some woodcuts and engravings after Rubens. Many of the prints relate to frescoes and wall paintings in Rome, Mantua and other Italian cities - and Fontainebleau - places the Stanleys would visit during their summer holidays driving across Europe. Most of their travels took them to Italy, where they would explore the artistic centres as well as less mainstream towns, discovering the art and architecture, and with luck and good judgment track down works of which they owned printed versions or preparatory drawings. To the end of his life Eric retained the affection and respect of his fellow-scholars and a wide circle of friends, many of whom had begun as his students. Among his published works The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 1975 and In the Foreground: Beowulf, 1994, stand out, while he wrote hundreds of learned articles and was invited to present papers around the world. He never truly retired and indeed was reading draft entries for the revised Oxford English Dictionary just a month before he died. Not much seems to link Eric Stanley’s private interest in Renaissance and Mannerist prints and drawings with his work as a scholar of Anglo-Saxon literature, unless one considers the mythological motifs and themes central to the art and literature of these distinct periods. It must have been the ancient myths and histories, so vividly evoked in the old English epics as well as in the graphic arts of the 16th and 17th century, which held a lifelong fascination for him. Further groups of drawings and of prints from the collection will appear in the online sale of Old Master Drawings (27 November – 5 December 2019), in a sale of Old Master Prints in July 2020, and subsequent sales of drawings in 2020. Noël Annesley, Honorary Chairman

MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI (1480-1534)

The Dream ('Raphael's Dream')

Details

MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI (1480-1534)
The Dream ('Raphael's Dream')
engraving, circa 1508, on laid paper, watermark Griffin (similar to Briquet 7447), a very good impression of this scarce print, trimmed to or just inside the subject, a long irregular repaired tear from lower right to upper centre, several short repaired paper splits and small paper losses made-up with pen and ink
Sheet 232 x 329 mm.

Literature

Bartsch 359
I. H. Shoemaker & E. Brown, The Engravings of Marcantonio Raimondi, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence / Ackland Museum of Art, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (exh. cat.), 1981, no. 12, p. 74-5 (another impression illustrated).
B. L. Brown, 'Troubled waters: Marcantonio Raimondi and Dürer's nightmares in the shore', in: E. H. Wouk & D. Morris (eds.), Marcantonio Raimondi, Raphael and the Image Multiplied, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2016, p. 32-41, fig. 2.1 (another impression illustrated).

Special notice

This lot is offered without reserve.

Brought to you by

Tim Schmelcher

tschmelcher@christies.com +44 20 7389 2268

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