ALBRECHT DÜRER

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• Nativity - Weihnacht 1504
  
  engraving; 187 x 122 mm (7 3/8 x 3 13/16 inches)
  Bartsch 2; Meder 2 b (of g); Schoch/Mende/Scherbaum 40
  
  WATERMARK
  bull’s head with flower (Meder 62)
  
  PROVENANCE
  Frederic Robert Halsey, New York (Lugt 1308);
  his sale, Anderson Galleries, New York, March 14–16, 1917 (this print is mentioned by Lugt as le plus haut prix de la vente), sold for $2,050 to
  Knoedler & Co., New York (their stock no. in pencil verso A 103 MK)
  Dr. James H. Lockhart, Geneseo, New York (not in Lugt; see Stogdon, p. 365)
  Robert M. Light & Co., Inc., Boston
  Carolyn and George Rowland, Boston
  
  LITERATURE
  Robert McDonald, An Exhibition of 100 Prints and Drawings from the Collection of James H. Lockhardt, Jr., exhibition catalogue, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg, 1939, pp. 32f. (ill.)
  
  A very fine impression in extremely good condition; trimmed on our just inside the platemark.
  

• Das Löwenwappen mit dem Hahn – Coat of Arms with a Lion and a Cock ca. 1502–3
  
  engraving, 185 x 118 mm (7 5/16 x 4 5/8 inches)
  
  Bartsch 100; Meder 97 a? (of g); Schoch/Mende/Scherbaum 35
  
  PROVENANCE
  Thomas Miller Whitehead, London (Lugt 2449)
  Sir Philip Burne-Jones (acc. to a pencil inscription verso)
  P. & D. Colnaghi & Co, London (their stock no. in pencil verso C23536)

  The heraldic symbols in this coat of arms are not associated with any specific aristocratic family; indeed, the elevation of the rooster, a common barnyard bird, perched commandingly with outspread wings at the top of the sheet, well above the stylized lion trapped on its heraldic shield, might be seen as a very conscious subversion of aristocratic pretentions. Such freely invented coats of arms reflect the increasingly widespread adoption of aristocratic imagery by the emerging middle classes, including artisans, from the late Middle Ages. (In 1523 Dürer even created his own woodcut coat of arms.) In Coat of Arms with Lion and Rooster, the artist deploys the motifs in a fantasy piece that allows him to play with a wide range of textures and ornamental forms. The lavish foliate scrollwork twisting behind the shield, with elaborate shading creating almost three-dimensional effects, reminds us that the artist originally trained as a goldsmith, the craft in which the tradition of pure ornamental engraving on metal is thought to have originated.