Lot Essay
The present drawing belongs to a group of studies of wings of a blue roller by or after Albrecht Dürer. Dürer's prototype, now in the Albertina, Vienna, represents the upper side of a left wing and is signed and dated 1512, F. Koreny, Albrecht Dürer und die Tier- und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance, Munich, 1985, no. 22, illustrated. This drawing is not only characteristic of Dürer's strong interest in naturalistic life studies but it was also a paradigm for many northern artists of the later 16th Century.
Several drawings of highly refined draughtsmanship, all inspired by Dürer's model, survive. These drawings, like the present one, are mostly executed on vellum in the same medium. Recent scholarship has convincingly attributed many of them to Hans Hoffmann, court painter to Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, who owned Dürer's original. Hoffmann, who certainly studied Dürer's wing study, did not merely copy it but executed several slightly different versions, some of which he probably made from nature.
Several drawings of highly refined draughtsmanship, all inspired by Dürer's model, survive. These drawings, like the present one, are mostly executed on vellum in the same medium. Recent scholarship has convincingly attributed many of them to Hans Hoffmann, court painter to Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, who owned Dürer's original. Hoffmann, who certainly studied Dürer's wing study, did not merely copy it but executed several slightly different versions, some of which he probably made from nature.