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The Collation

An important auction

broadside advertising a 1617 auction

broadside advertising a 1617 auction (click to enlarge in a new window/tab)

Let it be known that amongst the furniture of the late Duke of Aerschot, there are about 2000 paintings in all kinds of colors by a variety of excellent masters, such as Albrecht Dürer, Lucas van Leyden, Jan Gossaert, Hieronymus Bosch, “Florus Daych,” “Longue Pierre,” Titian, Veronese, and others.

  1. See Christian Coppens, “A Post-Mortem Inventory Turned into a Sales Catalogue: a Screening of the Auction Catalogue of the Library of Charles Duke of Croy, Brussels 1614”, Quærendo 38 (2008), pp. 359–380. My thanks to Professor Coppens for the reference to this article.
  2. The majority of broadsides in the Short Title Catalogus Vlaanderen from the seventeenth century are ordinances and so-called “Gheboden ende wtgheroepen,” public announcements of regulations. In the STCV, broadsides can be searched by entering the term “single-page print” in the subject term index in the drop-down list on the home page.
  3. See Coppens, p. 367.
  4. Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography, New Castle, DE, 2006, p. 86.
  5. Coppens, p. 362. It is not clear whether Rutgerus Velpius himself was still active that year, but the shop is clearly mentioned in the novel’s imprint: “Ex officina Rutgeri Velpij & Huberti Antonij Typog. Iur. anno 1614.”

Comments

An early 17th century auction of paintings in Brusselsn, 50 yrs before auctions arrived in London. http://t.co/5DWJdoTaJt

@GeorgeVertue — March 12, 2013

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This advertisement for paintings is early for the Low Countries as well. Later auctions have been studied by the Antwerp scholar Dr. Dries Lyna. In 2010 he published his PhD about this topic. It is entitled The cultural construction of value: art auctions in Antwerp and Brussels (1700-1794). Antwerp, University of Antwerp, 2010. In 2012, he surveyed the ‘British’ connection in a chapter of a book, called: ‘In search of a British connection: Flemish dealers on the London art market and the taste for continental paintings (1750-1800)’, in Charlotte Gould (ed.) et al., Marketing arts in the British Isles, 1700 to the present: a cultural history. Aldershot, Ashgate, 2012, pp. 101-118.

Goran Proot — March 12, 2013

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