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The Popular Imagery collection comprises 822 European prints, paintings, and
drawings, most of which date from the 16th through 18th centuries. Prints make up
the bulk of the collection, with 686 intaglios (including seventeen mezzotints), 115
woodcuts, one wood engraving, and six lithographs. There are fourteen unique
drawings and paintings. Six of the works are on vellum, and there is an engraving
on
silk. In addition there are four sheets of accompanying letterpress. Almost half of
the works have German titles and/or text; other predominant languages are French,
Latin, Dutch, and Italian. There are a few works with English or Spanish text. The
works are listed in the order of the dealer’s list. |
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About 600 of the works have named artists or publishers. A few of the works were
created by well-known artists, including Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Younger,
and Hans Holbein. For a complete listing of the identified artists, see the Creator
Index in this finding aid. |
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A large part of the collection consists of works that pertain to contemporary events.
There are several political satires on events such as the French Revolution, the
American Revolution, other wars, alliances, and treaties, as well as satires on some
of the European rulers, especially James II and Louis XIV. There are twenty-five
works pertaining to the Thirty Years' War, including views and maps of battles,
cities, and forts, depictions of soldiers and particular events including the
Defenestration of Prague and the Peace of Westphalia, and various political
allegories. Several prints depict contemporary crimes and scandals. European rulers
are prominent in the collection, with seventeen portraits and seventy-nine prints
with scenes that include depictions of rulers; all but one of the Holy Roman
Emperors after 1612 appears in these works. There are eighteen scenes of processions
on such occasions as coronations, royal marriages, and funerals of kings, and a few
prints showing rulers' bodies lying in state. |
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The collection includes social satires on a broad range of topics such as women,
domestic life, fashion, folly, social parasites, news reporting, Jews, alcohol
consumption, and the 18th century silhouette portrait fad. |
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There are several works pertaining to religious subjects such as Martin Luther, the
Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, Calvinism, the Catholic Church, and the
Jesuits. About forty devotional works have depictions of the Crucifixion or the
Virgin Mary, and thirteen works show other saints. About a dozen prints illustrate
biblical events. The collection holds five indulgences. |
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Among the collection’s allegorical prints are several on individual vices and
virtues, and on good and evil in general, often showing those who succumb to evil
being led into flames by winged demons. Other allegorical subjects include marriage
and death, with the Dance of Death motif appearing in several prints. There are four
sets of allegorical prints on the seasons. The senses are depicted in nineteen
allegorical prints, and eighteen prints illustrate various proverbs. |
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Approximately twenty prints illustrate contemporary curiosities such as people with
physical abnormalities, strange animals and plants, and a hyena that terrorized the
town of Gevaudan, France in 1764. |
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A few works depict various technologies, such as water pumping machinery, torture
instruments, cannon and bell founding, an iron bridge, and Strassburg Cathedral's
astronomical clock. The collection includes two board games, a few prints apparently
designed to be cut up as playing cards, five calendars, and an astrology wheel.
There is a design for a barbershop sign and advertisements for tobacco and
decorative horse accessories. There are ten large works issued on the occasion of
disputations of academic theses, and three large prints of family trees. |
