ROBERT NANTEUIL

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• ROBERT NANTEUIL and ANTON WÜRTH
  Le Cardinal Jules Mazarin devant sa galerie (1659) and M.drôlerie (2015) engraving from three plates printed on three sheets

  545 x 780 mm (21 ⅜ x 30 ¾ inches)

  for the Nanteuil: Petitjean/Wickert 165 second (final) state

  It all started with a misunderstanding. I thought that just because I had once completed an incomplete old master print (see N – Predella III; C.G. Boerner, Neue Lagerliste 130: Raritäten – Rare Prints, Düsseldorf/New York 2012, no. 33), I could automatically do the same thing with any other print. I therefore felt challenged to clear up this misunderstanding when I approached “Mazarin” because trimmed is not trimmed, and even more so because the “large Louis” was not actually trimmed but was meant as a print in two parts—and the lower part was missing in the impression I “completed” back in 2012.

  The other difference is that “Louis” was conceived as an ornamental print. The portrait medallion surrounded by the insignia of power and the band with the inscription below define a spiritual space while “Mazarin” is represented as a portrait of power within an illusionistic space. And the reason that the sheet had been trimmed was merely practical—to make it fit into a collector’s album (accordingly Petitjean and Wickert, the authors of the catalogue raisonné, remark: “En raison de ses dimensions, cette estampe est rarement complète”). The print is, therefore, not incomplete but has been damaged—twice: physically by being cut at the upper and along the right margins, but also conceptually, since the damage leads to a misunderstanding of the composition as a whole.

  My first design fell for this misunderstanding and I tried to restore the damage, to substitute what was missing in the same way my predella had “restored” the missing lower portion of “Louis.” The result was virtually surreal and I discarded it immediately. I only gradually realized that a commentary as completion would not make sense. The commentary as an independent commentary, however, might indeed make sense.

  I remembered the drôleries of medieval book illuminations—free drawings in the margins that serve as a playing field for the illuminator, a space where he is not bound to the text. Yet unlike the medieval illuminator, I am concerned with the relationship between image and commentary; it is essential to my project. What I was looking for was a way to visualize the essence of the Baroque, of what Baroque entails conceptually. The image of Cardinal Mazarin in his Gallery is an exemplary representation of the spirit of the Baroque, one that, for me, comes down to two features: the fold (see Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, transl. Tom Conley, Minneapolis 1992) and orientation toward infinity and eternity. I can express this quintessential “Baroqueness” in the following way:

  At the top, a straight horizontal line—the timeline;
  To the right a vertically oriented folded line—the line of power.

  And the flowers are there to structure the space. Why flowers? Because flowers are beautiful. For me, flowers are like periods set within the commentary like a musical note that is held over by a tremolo. The flowers help me to interrupt the idealized space and they function as a link between the two sheets. They formally enclose the composition. In the sheet to the right they balance the vertically oriented folded line with a horizontal countermovement. At the top they create the illusion of an expansion beyond the platemark into the open.

  The composition as a whole is enclosed in a simple dark frame with all three sheets set flush next to each other.

  Anton Würth (translation A.K.)

• ROBERT NANTEUIL
  1623 Reims – Paris 1678
  
  Jean François Sarrazin 1656
  
  engraving; 215 x 152 mm (8 7/16 x 5 15/16 inches)
  
  Robert-Dumesnil 220; Petitjean/Wickert 203 first state (of five)

  PROVENANCE
  Ducs d’Arenberg, Brussels and Nordkirchen, Westphalia (Lugt 567)

  It is unusual for Nanteuil to also give the date of the drawing. Here, he explicitly signs the print as delin[eavit] 1649 et sculp[sit] 1656.

• ROBERT NANTEUIL
  1623 Reims – Paris 1678
  
  Hardouin de Péréfixe 1662
  
  engraving; 328 x 257 mm (12 15/16 x 10 1/8 inches)
  
  Robert-Dumesnil 211; Petitjean/Wickert 191 second state (of four)

  WATERMARK
  oval ?

  PROVENANCE
  Franz Baumgartner, Vienna (Lugt 975)
  Rudolf Peltzer, Cologne (Lugt 2231);
  his sale, H.G. Gutekunst, Stuttgart, May 2–8, 1913
  Knoedler & Co., New York (their stock no. K 5596)
  private collection, USA (acquired during the 1920s and 1930s)
  by descent to the grandson of the collector
  R.M. Light & Co. (acquired in the late 1980s)

• ROBERT NANTEUIL
  1623 Reims – Paris 1678
  
  Hardouin de Péréfixe 1663
  
  engraving; 363 x 282 mm (14 1/4 x 11 1/8 inches)
  
  Robert-Dumesnil 212; Petitjean/Wickert 192 second state (of three)

  WATERMARK
  arms of Etienne de Meau (cf. Heawood 686)

  PROVENANCE
  Max J. Bonn, London (Lugt 1878)
  Knoedler & Co., New York (their stock no. K 2096 MK)
  private collection, USA (acquired during the 1920s and 1930s)
  by descent to the grandson of the collector
  R.M. Light & Co. (acquired in the late 1980s)

  Hardouin de Beaumont de Péréfixe (1605–1671) was chamberlain of Cardinal Richelieu.