Battle, perhaps Tancred attacking the Saracen host
[Baur, Johann Wilhelm.] Battle, perhaps Tancred surveying the Saracen host.
Gouache and gold over ink on vellum mounted on panel: 5 ¼” x 7 ¼”, 135mm x 184mm.
Matted and framed (11 ½” x 13 ½”). Some flaking to the sky, with some abrasions at the right edge. Some wear to the gilding, especially at the border. The vellum coming up a little from the board at the upper part of the left side. Panel curved forward (i.e., concave), with some evidence of worming. Gallery label of Jean Willems, Brussels (no. 2864) to the verso of the mount. Purchased Sotheby’s London 5 July 2006, lot 175.
Johann Wilhelm Baur (Bauer, 1607–1642) was born in Strasbourg and spent much of his working life as a Grand Tourist in Rome, though he died in Vienna. Trained under the miniaturist Friedrich Brentel, he came to provide illustrations for engravings, including Capricci di varie battaglie ([Rome]: 1635) and for an edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Nuremberg: ca. 1645).
Baur’s training as a miniaturist shows through in the fine penwork of the mid-ground. The gilt border within the dark ink (?) border suggests that the picture was intended for presentation, or as a gift.
Earlier dealers have suggested that this represented a battle of Romans and Carthaginians — presumably due to the presence of elephants in the massed host. Others of Baur’s small watercolors have come to the market — done in the same technique at a nearly identical size — depict scenes from Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), which is set at the end of the XIc. At the end of Canto XIX, Tancred receives a report of the Saracen host from Rinaldo, who has seen:
Tents infinite, and standards broad he spies,
This red, that white, that blue, this purple was,
And hears strange tongues, and stranger harmonies
Of trumpets, clarions, and well-sounding brass:
The elephant there brays, the camel cries.
The horses neigh as to and fro they pass:
Which seen and heard, he said within his thought,
Hither all Asia is, all Afric, brought.[1]
[1] XIX.lviii, trans. Edward Fairfax (1600).
Item #JLR0476
Price: $12,000