Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). Daniel in the Den of Lions. By example of Daniel, promoted in the Jew’s Babylonian Captivity and under the Persian Cyrus I calumniated by enviers and consigned to the den of lions – here amongst eleven grimly-peacefully mane bearers – ,

Jehovah , the  god  of  the  Israelites , shows  his  might ,

exciting the court on the gallery in unbelieving stupefaction. Brush drawing with wash in grey-blue + black with heightening in white for Johann Daniel Herz I (1693 Augsburg 1754; an “art publisher with an eye for quality” [Rolf Biedermann, 1987], “especially his sheets of large size shall be mentioned” [Thieme-Becker, 1923]). (1732.) Inscribed in sepia by the publishers: Jo El. Riedinger (sic!) inv et del 1732. 837 x 533 mm + 32 x 20 mm additional inscription field laterally lower right.

The preparatory drawing in reverse, pictorially lined with wide and narrow border, to plate Schwarz 1440 worked by the engraver Johann Jacob Wangner (“Iun.”, c. 1703 Augsburg 1781; the contemporary Augsburg artists “also furnished him with drawings to be engraved”, Nagler) and known to literature only since 1910 by the copy of the von Gutmann Collection, in its reproduction, however, obviously remaining far behind the bloom of the drawing (its subject size with somewhat narrower conclusion above 793 x 557 [sic! or mistake?] mm compared with a pure subject size here of 820-822 x 507-509 mm).

belongs  to  the  largest-sized  of  the  drawn  œuvre

and follows the bible’s tradition Book of Daniel, chap. 6:

“ It pleased Darius (recte Cyrus the Elder, see below) to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom. And over these three presidents; of whom Daniel was first …

Daniel  was  preferred  above  the  presidents  and  princes ,

because  an  excellent  spirit  was  in  him ;

and the king thought to set him over the whole realm. Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault … Then said these men,

We  shall  not  find  any  occasion  against  this  Daniel ,

except  we  find  it  against  him  concerning  the  law  of  his  God …

Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel,

and  cast  him  into  the  den  of  lions .

Now the king (very sorrowful about the development) spake and said unto Daniel :

“ Thy  God ,

whom  thou  servest  continually ,

he  will  deliver  thee !

Then the king arose very early in the morning, and went in haste unto the den of lions … (a)nd cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel: … is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions? Then said Daniel … that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me … Then was the king exceedingly glad for him, and commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den … and no manner of hurt was found upon him,

because  he  believed  in  his  God . ”

Just as this then also had the Babylonian Captivity (597-537, thus not “70 years” as Jeremy 25, line 11), anyway not to be mistaken as enslavement though still wearing the Jews down, grow to his people’s weal for it became

“ a period of purification from which the Israelites emerged both nationally and religiously as newly born. The contrast to the victorious, but degenerated paganism invigorated the nationalism and the religious belief … (I)nstead of a limited tribal god one learned to recognize in Jehovah the master of the universe

under  whose  mighty  protection  one  knew  oneself ”

(Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 4^th ed., II [1888], 207).

Under the latter aspect the spectacular Den of Lions event proves to be, independently of its true chronological base, see below,

a theme which with respect to his insight drawing from 1723 on Alexander the Great’s decision at the Indian Hyphasis in 326 BC to return was to fascinate Ridinger even more so as according to biblical reading

to whom ten years before he had dedicated his Alexander cycle – besides the Hyphasis drawing The Siege of Halicarnassus and The Crossing of the Tigris published also in engraving by Jeremias Wolff Heirs and Herz I resp. – and which theme in the 30s he jointly with Brockes finally sounded the mort with the first four plates of the “Fights of Killing Animals”.

But also just by its size his

stands in context with those of the Alexander cycle of which, however, just only the two “heroic” ones had been engraved and published elsewhere for at that time not yet working in copper and publishing himself. Nevertheless the procedure remained the same, too, for the later Den of Lions.

Common to all those “outside works” their

exorbitant  rarity  even  as  engraving

as then also for the one of the “Den of Lions” no second copy is provable here since Schwarz (1910). Engraved it was expressively missing thus with Counts Faber-Castell (1958), too.

The paths of the preparatory drawings as the plates were – different from the works kept together by the Ridingers through the generations and finally handed over in good order – determined by changing publishers now sooner, then later and their being embedded into a mixed production finally lost in anonymity. On account of such handicaps

to which the condition of already the times of Faber-Castell with following preservation by just one careful hand has to be inferior.

So besides two horizontal smoothed folds which remained perceptible as abrasions at top below of the gallery and centrally below of the archway a plenty of tiny(est) abrasions especially in the marginal parts, then, and here impairing only up to a point, for 2.5-3 cm in height in the left part of the sheet above of the center fold. Of the predominantly only spotlike foxing at the back only isolated slightly larger ones shining through largely in the upper half of the subject, perceptible almost only in the washed free area between archway and gallery. Quite isolated small marginal tears reinforced. Generally the quite tolerable wrinkles of the centuries as due to the hard to preserve oversize and greatest rarity, concealed by the pictorial  grandeur  of  the  composition  with its, not least,

10  different  masterly  lion  physiognomies

(that of the eleventh lion covered). And

Weigel (1856, with c. 1849 sheets – 17 of which lion sheets of usual kind – most extensive inventory, dating back to the bequest of drawings purchased from the heirs in 1832) – Coppenrath (1889/90, 66 sheets) – Wawra (1890, 234 sheets) .

First presence on the market on occasion of present Den of Lions drawing then 1958 with Faber-Castell , followed by great distance by above Alexander drawing writing art history with the Hyphasis event of 326 and present here likewise.

Not least in this connection it shall also be reminded of Hans Möhle’s reference of already 1947 to which

“ the  special  accomplishment  of  German  baroque  lies  in  the  subject  of  the  drawing ”

as in more recent time Ruth Baljöhr drew the attention on again.

And thus remains as résumé

For today’s Jewry rests on just those pillars which are fruits of the, more correctly spoken, Babylonian Exile as co-source of also the Den of Lions manifestation based on one “for he believed in God”. For, it shall be repeated,

“ In fact the Jews lived quite peacefully and had plenty of opportunity to practice their faith in exile in Babylon.

The  synagogue  and  the  canonization  of  the  Torah

have  their  origins  in  Babylonian  Judaism ,

as , of  course , does  the  Babylonian  Talmud ”

(Bryan S. Rennie ,

Westminster College, New Wilmington, PA, in his internet article [c. 2005] “The Dating of the Book of Daniel” – http://www.westminster.edu/staff/brennie/daniel.htm – under explanation of the author of the tradition turning out to be a non-contemporary with the result of an also mixed up sequence of government Cyrus/Darius, but foremost also an attribution of the Daniel stories to the age of the Seleucid ruler of Babylon, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who in 167 BC profaned the temple and in whose time [176-163], which just as well were the time of the author of the Book of Daniel, “loyalty to the Jewish food laws and the refusal to worship images of other gods – as starting point of the report on the Den of Lions – had become a question of life and death”).

By which the report of the Den of Lions event proves to be a combination of the religious hardships at the time of Antiochus with the historical characters of the Babylonian Exile. Because for the king anxious for Daniel inevitably the profaner and religious tyrant Antiochus is out of question while it is just the Persian Cyrus who became king of Babylon in 539 and in 538 issued

the  fate-turning  Edict  of  Cyrus

(comp. 2^nd Chronik 36, lines 22. f. and Book Esra 1, lines 1-3 resp.) as a

“ crucial  event  in  the  history  of  the  religion  of  Israel ”

(Rennie) as finally allowing the Hebrews the return to Israel.

Both facts, religious persecution under Antiochus and royal generosity under Cyrus, constitute the intellectual content of the Den of Lions experience and its message

Compare also with Rembrandt’s sketchlike pen and ink drawing of the Den of Lions event in Amsterdam (cat. of the Netherlandish drawings of the Rijksmuseum, vol. I, Rembrandt en zijn School, 1942, no. 64 with pl. 47) and the “1652”, recte 1649, drawing of the same theme of his pupil Constantijn de Renesse in Rotterdam (Giltaij, The Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, 1988, 130 with [color]ills. pp. 243 + 257). No indication, however, in Robels (1989) of the Den of Lions picture by Frans Snyders (1579-1657) mentioned by Meyers Konv.-Lex., 4^th ed., vol. XIV (1889), 1045 for the imperial gallery in Vienna.

For the execution in grey-blue here see Vredeman de Vries’ 1574 line drawing watercolored in blue “Daniel and King Cyrus in the Temple of Bel” in Vienna (exhib. cat. Hans Vredeman de Vries und die Renaissance im Norden, 2002, no. 130 with ills. in color), formed possibly in context to his four Daniel copies to etchings of the 1579 Thesaurus biblicus with de Jode (cat. no. 131). As then Daniel’s apocryphal episodes were generally paid attention to by the Old Master. So we have Rembrandt’s 1633 oil of the said communal visit in the temple (Gersan, Rembrandt’s Paintings, 1968, no. 59 with ills.). And to Daniel 14, 4-22, e. g., Jeronymus Cock published an engraved set after Maarten van Heemskerck in 1565.

“ Received the Heron Hawking today, it is exceptionally nice. Thank you for packing so carefully … ”

(Mr. L. A. F., December 6, 2005)