1 / 11
Photo 1/11 du lotPhoto 2/11 du lotPhoto 3/11 du lotPhoto 4/11 du lotPhoto 5/11 du lotPhoto 6/11 du lotPhoto 7/11 du lotPhoto 8/11 du lotPhoto 9/11 du lotPhoto 10/11 du lotPhoto 11/11 du lot
Maître Jean Emmanuel PRUNIER

28 - [MANUSCRIT ON PARCHMENT] Liber amicorum of the 16th century …
See original version (French)

Estimate €8,000 - €10,000
Sale commission
Description
[MANUSCRIT ON PARCHMENT] Liber amicorum of the 16th century Magnificent album dating from 1586-1588 illustrated with 15 miniatures and 18 illuminated armorial plates, in a later 19th century binding in half vellum with corners, and titled vignette on the first cover, nicely bound and in good condition. Typical of 16th-century "friendship albums" in the Holy German Empire, the miniatures depict symbolic scenes often accompanied by maxims or mottoes in German, and more rarely in Italian or French. Almost all of the captioned coats-of-arms point to personalities from Nuremberg, as do the visual culture and a significant number of the iconographic references that seem to have fed the imagination of this particularly successful liber amicorum. The book is in a good state of preservation, each composition having been produced on the verso or recto alone in order to preserve the freshness of the parchment and its legibility. The compositions, which are extremely varied and probably by the same hand, although there is some doubt about some of them, are clearly influenced by the repertoire of the humanist tradition of the Italian and Germanic Renaissance: we can see the inspiration of Cranach, with a pronounced taste for the subjects of Venus and Cupid, or Hans Holbein in the precision of the drawing. On the Italian side, the mix of mythological figures and sketched landscapes is reminiscent of painters such as Dosso Dossi, as well as Raphael and his followers. Ovid's metamorphoses are also very much in evidence in the myth of Actaeon surprising Artemis in his bath and the myth of Daphne pursued by Apollo, whose two compositions are clearly based on two engravings by Virgil Solis, an important illustrator and distributor of prints from Nuremberg. The allegorical figure of the naked woman locked in a cage, with a church in the background, certainly evokes the mastery of passions and the path to salvation, and is captioned in German, which can be translated roughly as "The cage suits me fine; but never sin again". The particularly evocative allegory of Venus en Fortune on the sphere, accompanied by the quotation "Assai ben balla, à chi la fortuna sona", is probably freely inspired by an engraving from the Hecatongraphie "l'ymage de fortune", Némésis (the great fortune) by Albrecht Dürer or another similar engraving from an equivalent book of emblems. Several social and gallant scenes with strong symbolism are also depicted, typical of the libri amicorum, showing the social types of the "honourable young man" or the "virtuous young woman", often dressed in costumes reminiscent of southern Germany or German-speaking Switzerland. The figure of the knight in armour accompanied by the motto in Old French "La bonne conscience il n'a point de bien du monde, garde de mal faire, et les maléfices laisse parler" is particularly successful and evocative of an idealised portrait of one of the contributors, whose arms appear opposite (Hans Lüdwiger?). The composition on ff.6 is of particular interest, as the text accompanying it has been completely crossed out in the past, but can still be roughly translated as follows: "If the emperor had acted with discernment, he would have sent the pope to the gallows, along with all the monks, and given them to the devil as a New Year's present"; it is easy to understand the reason for the erasures, as this was part of the post-Lutheran reformation period and the tensions between Protestants and Catholics. Other compositions are much more comical or carnivalesque, such as the last one depicting a man dressed as a madman carrying an elegant woman on his shoulders, threatened by a man with a giant spoon; or the satirical scene of a man riding a goat; this fits quite naturally into the humanist student context of the time. The name Dielherr von Nürnberg on the first coat of arms might suggest a link between the owner of this Liber Amicorum and Johann Michael Dilherr, a Protestant theologian born in 1604 who worked in university circles in Altdorf and Jena. Provenance: Armorial bookplate Iohann Carl Edler Gutermann von Gutershoffen des H.R.R. Ritter, under der Freyen Reichs = Statt Augspurg, Rittmeister
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
About the sale The Mirrors of Time-Sunday 28 June 2026
Auction location
Auction time 06/28/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures modified on 05/27/2026 at 2:52 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
You may also like