First print of this masterpiece ofe Brueghel.
Antwerp, 1559-1560.
Brueghel The Elder, Pieter. Fortitude [La Force].
Antwerp, 1559-1560.
Burin engraving. Legend in Latin. Very beautiful margins.
223 x 288 mm (330 x 255 mm with margins).
First print of this superb print from the suite of the seven virtues published in 1559-1560.
Leeber, 36; The new Hollstein Dutch & Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts, 1450-1700, 18; Van Bastelaer, 137; Sellink, 92; Klein, 53.
Engraving of Strength, one of the 7 virtues, by Philippe Galle after a drawing by Pieter Brueghel el the Elder, published by Hieronimus Cock.
Extremely rare with such beautiful margins.
This extraordinary masterpiece by Pieter Brueghel engraved with a burin and titled Fortitude (Strength) carries the publisher’s address Jerome Cock.
It is of a powerful print.
Before being a painter, Brueghel was a draftsman.
“It was as a student of Pieter Coecke that in 1551 Peter Brueghel was admitted to the Antwerp guild. Then, following the custom established among Flemish painters, at least since Jan Gossart, about forty years earlier, the young ‘Freemaster’ left for Italy, where, instead of, like his contemporaries Lambert Lombart, Frans Floris, studying the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, or the more recent works of the latest great Venetians Tintoretto and Titian, he fled old stones, columns and imposing frescoes to draw in the Roman countryside, a precursor in this respect of modern landscape painters. Although we do not know the exact route of Brueghel to Italy, which perhaps took him through France, we have something better still: his first known drawings. Make no mistake about this word ‘drawings’, they are by no means sketches. Not only were the very complete drawings marking his entire career almost all intended to be faithfully reproduced by engraving, but also based on his first drawings, dated 1552 and 1553, it was not until 1559 that his first painted work appeared.
Without concluding that nothing was painted before this date, it is nonetheless evident that drawing, as he conceived it, was a sufficient and complete means of expression for him. Returned from Italy in 1554, he settled again in Antwerp and worked for Jerome Cock, a former painter, established, with his brother Mathys, publisher and print seller, under the sign of ‘The Four Winds’. …
Dated 1559, the oldest of his paintings, the ‘Flemish Proverbs’, already mixes rusticity with the strange. Following other figurative proverbs, the ‘Battle between Carnival and Lent’, also from 1559, is still fundamentally popular in tone, although already moving towards the fantastic through burlesque. With the Fall of the Rebel Angels, the purely fantastic production of Brueghel, so directly inspired by Hieronymus Bosch.” Jacques Busse.
The iconic suite of the seven engravings of the virtues by Pieter Bruegel is perhaps one of his most famous works to date.
It is an astounding series with each print revealing more and more of Bruegel’s limitless sensibility of religious and moral scenes.
Each work is a masterpiece in itself, making this rare and complete series of seven a fantastic suite to have in any collection.
According to Manfred Sellink (2007), “Like the Sins, the Virtues are not an arbitrary selection of attributes, but consist of the three Theological Virtues (Faith, Hope and Charity) and four Cardinal Virtues (Justice, Prudence, Fortitude and Temperance), canonized in medieval times…Bruegel’s representations of the Virtues are starkly realistic. This is not to say that they reflect the world Bruegel lived in, but that the architecture, costumes, mise–en-scène and ‘stage props’ would have been familiar to his contemporaries“.
Created between 1559 and 1561, Pieter Bruegel sought to make this suite of Seven Virtues as a sequel to his previous Seven Deadly Sins. They were originally a series of seven preparatory drawings, only to be engraved by Philips Galle and later published by Hieronymus Cock. Most of these works have been printed on fine, watermarked paper.
Fortitude (Latin Fortitude) is represented as a courageous angel, standing upon the neck of evil as she tethers the chain around his neck. Nothing seems to distract her, amidst the brewing and tumultuous scene of men in the background, conquering their evil vices. It is splendidly engraved, with fruitful detail and endless action. Featuring the Gothic P with Flower watermark (Br. 8641).
Two lines of Latin in lower margin: animum vincere, iracundiam cohibere caeteraq[ue] vitia et affectus cohibere vera fortitudo est. (To conquer one’s impulses, to restrain anger and the other vices and emotions: this is the true fortitude).
“Died in 1569, Peter Brueghel was, after Hieronymus Bosch, who died in 1516… la a great figure of the Flemish 16the century, solidly and clearly situated between the century of the Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, Memling, extending into Quentin Metsys and the century of Rubens and the Baroques” Jacques Busse.
