Maarten de Vos

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Maarten de Vos
1532-1603
Album of Drawings (25) Illustrating the Life of David (17) and Subjects from the New Testament (7 plus 1 copy)
Pen and brown ink and wash, with white opaqe watercolor, often over black chalk, on paper. Oblong folio, bound in vellum.
11 x 15 3/4 inches (278 x 400 mm)
2006.23:1-25
Notes: 

Also see records for individual drawings.
The seventeen drawings representing scenes from the story of David, with one exception, are preparatory designs for the engraved series by Aegidius Sadeler (ca. 1555-1609?) : "Patientiae Davids regis et prophetae in Israel: fons et scaturigo Psalterii" (Hollstein XXI, pp. 8-10, nos. 2-17). Both "The Sermon on the Mount", or "The Foretelling of the Destruction of the Temple" (folio 18) and "The Persecution of the Servants of Christ" (folio 21) are preparatory designs for a series of six prints illustrating "The Advent of Christ", or "The Sorrows of the World", engraved by Jerome Wierix (1553-1619) and published by Jan Sadeler (1550-1600). The twenty-five drawings were assembled and mounted in the present album by Johannes Baptista Jacobs (b. 1672), a book seller in Antwerp, around 1700.

Inscription: 

Front cover inscribed at upper right corner, with old pressmark, in brown ink, now illegible. On the inside cover, at upper right, in the hand of Lord Perceval, in brown ink, "I bought this book at Antwerp ye [superscript "e"] 27 Sept 1723 / of Mr. [superscript "r"] Jacobs's Son / Percival"; below this, in graphite, now almost completely erased, "25 Plates & 1 Portrait / £5/5/-". Pasted inside front cover, bookplates of Perceval, with his arms and date 1736, and of Fairfax Murray; also engraved portrait of Jacobs by L. Cause with a laudatory text in Latin. Manuscript title page inscribed, presumably by Jacobs, in brown ink, "Gheopenden Schat ende tresoor / Aerdigh ende Constigh üyt gewerckt / Den vermaerden ende Doornuffstighsten Schilder / Ende / Teeckenaer / Martinus de Vos / van / Antwerpen / Bÿ een vergaedert door het verloop ende tÿdt van Jaeren / Door / Joannes Baptista Jacobs / boukvercooper ende Const beminder / binnen / De vermaerde Coopstadt van / Antwerpen"; pasted on verso, engraved portrait of De Vos by Aegidius Sadeler after Joseph Heintz (Hollstein, XXI, p. 75, no. 340).

Provenance: 
Johannes Baptista Jacobs (b. 1672), Antwerp; by descent to his son; from whom purchased by John Perceval, Earl of Egmont (1683-1748), on 27 March 1723; probably Hanry C. Bohn (bookseller), London, ca. 1841; Charles Fairfax Murray, London; from whom purchased in 1910 by J. Pierpont Morgan (no mark; see Lugt 1509).
Associated names: 

Jacobs, Johannes Baptista, b. 1672, former owner.
Egmont, John Perceval, Earl of, former owner.
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.

Bibliography: 

Stampfle, Felice, with the assistance of Ruth S. Kraemer and Jane Shoaf Turner. Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries and Flemish Drawings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1991, p. 102, no. 220-244, repr.
Collection J. Pierpont Morgan : drawings by the old masters formed by C. Fairfax Murray. London : Privately printed, 1905-1912., nos. 137-39, 141 (Folios 1, 6, 13, 23), repr.

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