Lot 5: Israhel van Meckenem ( circa 1440-1503)

Israhel van Meckenem (circa 1440-1503)
Saint Judas Thaddaeus (Geisberg 218; Lehrs, Hollstein 264)
engraving with handcolouring, circa 1470, with a watermark fragment (small flower), probably Gothic P, a good, strong impression of Hollstein's second, final state, with the saint's name, extremely rare, with handcolouring in green, blue, brown, yellow and traces of red, probably contemporary, with wide margins, generally in very good condition
P. 114 x 73 mm., S. 162 x 102 mm.

Of the following three prints, undoubtedly by the same hand, only the first one, Saint Judas Thaddaeus, is recorded and, despite the lack of the artist's signature or monogram, firmly attributed to Israhel van Meckenem.
Lehrs knew only four plates from an assumed set of twelve Apostles in this format (L. 261-264: Saints James the Lesser, Philip, Simon and the present Judas Thaddaeus), all loosely based on engravings by the slightly older Master E.S. The two previously undescribed prints of Saint Peter (lot 5) and Saint John the Evangelist (lot 6) certainly belong to that same set and hence constitute important discoveries. Not only do they add to our knowledge of the corpus of Meckenem's earliest works. These handcoloured impressions also reflect on the usage of prints at the time and show how Meckenem's oeuvre bridges a seminal change in the early history of prints: from a substitute for book illuminations to an independent medium.

Of Judas Thaddaeus Lehrs records four impressions in public collections, three of the first state with text and one of the second state (in Vienna) with the saint's name burnished out. In his Hollstein -volume Fritz Koreny however revised the order of the two states. He believes that the text was added later and that the unique example in Vienna is in fact a first state impression.

Although in format and style more closely related to the set of Christ and the Twelve Apostles (L. 124-136), depicted standing on a similarly tiled floor, the model for Meckenem's Judas Thaddaeus is actually the small figure of Saint Matthew from a large single plate of Christ enthroned surrounded by the Twelve Apostles (L. 137 I). By changing the attribute from Matthew's helbard to Judas Thaddaeus's saw, he changed the identity of the saint.