Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). The Hippocrene. The Horse’s or Muse’s Fountain at the Parnas or Helicon as column of water rising up like a dome. With fountain ornaments, here the overgrown arch of a grotto, dominated by the fountain’s and Muse’s horse Pegasus and populated by the nine Muses as the guardians of the spring as well as river gods as the equally mandatory attributes of the fountain. Etching + engraving. 34.9 x 28.7 cm

Augsburg Art Collections, Exhibition Catalogue KUNSTREICH - Acquisitions 1990-2000, 2001, no. 101 with full-page + 4 detail ills.

One of six Roman numbered I/VI preferential prints in reddish black on ivory-coloured Hahnemühle paper. Besides there are ten ordinary prints in black numbered Arabic 1/10 on the same and toned Hahnemühle resp. and some Épreuves d’Éditeur from the not cleaned plate in partly additional colours and on further papers, all with the autograph signature of ridinger dealer lüder h. niemeyer together with the date of February 16^th, 1998, as the master’s 300^th birthday, and two remaining with the printer without signature. With the exception of the latter two all with comprehensive stamp to this edition on the back.

Undescribed composition, obviously dismissed by the master and uncovered here during cleaning at the back of the original copper printing plate for “The Evening of the Stags”, Thienemann 240, of the set of their “Four Daytimes”, thematically near, but autonomous to the group of “Fountains” Thienemann (878-881) called the “Mythological Pyramids”.

Mythological background of the time of interest here is the moment Pegasus “calmed the Helicon rising up to heaven by the ecstasy about the Muses’ songs with a beat of his hoof evoking by this the enchanting Fountain of the Muses Hippocrene” (Meyer’s Konversations-Lexikon, 4^th ed.).

Just to the sides of the horse the Muse of Painting not designated for her own with the painter’s stick and palette along with brushes in her left, pressing a groundhigh slab to herself, and Thalia as later guardian of theater in general, here with the comic mask, but in her right. What in ideas leads to Hogarth’s last self-portrait as painter with palette + brush before the canvas, on which he paints the comic muse with the mask as personification of his artistic inspiration. See Hogarth Catalogue Zurich, 1983, p. 18 along with illustrations pp. 17 + 135, dating the oil on ca. 1757, followed by the copper-work published March 29, 1758. Thinkable that Ridinger knew the work, even maybe that he was informed directly from London about its theme (compare with Th. 1097: “ … communicated from London”), namely the combination of the contents of both muses, and let it flow into his “Hippokrene”. With the result that this were to be dated between this corner point and October 1763 as the latest other for the set of The Deer’s Four Times of Day.

On the same level outwards Aphrodite casting the horoscope and Clio as announcer of history. After two puttos holding bird-shaped gargoyles - two reptile-like ones at the bottom - follow the other five Muses partly bathing their feet. The two in front right may be Erato connected specially to erotic poetry, here standing without attributes, and Terpsichore responsible for dance + choir singing, but with plectrum only. Of the both on the left one with yardstick. In between on the water group of river gods.

Schwarz, 1569 with illustration. On this in front of a statue of Minerva as patroness of the painters, too, a boy rests on his painter’s stick holding also a high slab standing on the ground and bearing the motto

“Nulla  dies  sine  linea”  –  No  day  without  a  brush’s  line

hence as expression of an absolute necessity of life. Accordingly the instruments of engraving including a plate and the utensils for painting on both the sides.

And culminating in Stillfried-Schwarz 1427 along with variant 1477 as the

supremacy  of  death .

With the painters’ utensils now amidst the lumber. And once again joined with a large stone slab the master also uses in his ordinary work.

Whereby ex-libris as supremacy of death turn out to be the final support for the claim of Ridinger for the Hippocrene, answering by this the question of origin of the group of fountains that Thienemann left unsettled.

Reflecting one of the most famous of those fountains

“ created  for  the  welfare  and  benefit  of  man ”

by the mythological gods who let nymphs and Muses take care for it as something exceedingly valuable. Only they were able to give to the spring

And is seen so until today and used in most manifold kinds.

Therewith, however, a

Created by one of the greatest artists close to nature in fine nearness to Antoine Watteau’s drawings “Diana Temple” + “The Arbor”, both of about 1714 and corresponding with each other and engraved by Gabriel Huquier for the drawing part (1726) of the Recueil Jullienne. Whereby the different creation of the sides of the “Diana Temple” invited Huquier to work two etchings after this: the Diana and the Neptune Temple (Nagler, Huquier, 41 f.). As then plays of water are present also at the “Arbor”, whose two little water spillers Ridinger quotes in the said water spitting birds held by puttos.

As evidenced also by other examples mostly proved here for the first time Ridinger was decidedly intimately familiar with the Recueil Jullienne and so got inspired for the Hippocrene by the models there mentioned before, however, at a quite other result. See the partly colour illustrations of which in the catalogues of the touring exhibitions Washington etc. 1984/85, pp. 140-144, + New York etc. 1999/2000, pp. 108-111.

Almost same-sized to the Watteaus for Ridinger’s Hippocrene is valid what Margaret Morgan Grasselli points out in the 84 catalogue to Watteau’s Arbor :

“ This drawing … is together

one  of  his  most  completed .

Besides it is one of the relatively few ornamental drawings (to which belong also the “Hounds and Death Game” in Rotterdam, p. 106) which are to be ascribed to him with absolute certainty.

Each smallest detail of this drawing indicates that it originates from the time of his greatest maturity: the variety, the wealth of ideas … the perfect design … the distinct energy which penetrates the whole work. ”

And analogously finally

“ … because we don’t have any indications for a painting hereto, we could proceed on the assumption that Watteau had never followed up the project. ”

Not least as a further  example of his mastership in imaginative improvisation completely unconsidered in the past as, likewise related to Watteau, proved here as secured for his “Self-Portrait in the Wood” (Thienemann XIX, 1) or quite in superior style for his “Cythera Lady” (Schwarz 1471) and doubtless for his “Lady with the Mask” (Schwarz 1458/28,407), too. Standing for ripe art supplied from old and great tradition.

“ Great artists seldom quote one another literally. In some cases they pay homage to a predecessor hinting unobstrusively in their own creations at other ideas ”

(Dirk De Vos, Rogier van der Weyden, 1999, p. 36, with the reference to Dieric Bouts [about 1420 – 1475] as the probably first example of “such a fruitful adoption ”).

His Hippocrene published here supposedly for the first time ever in an elitist-small worldwide edition. To match the size of the three other plates of the set of the “Four Day-times of the Stags” the composition might be shortened marginally a little. Besides printing was done with all necessary care for the stags’ scenery on the other side. A care that inevitably had been thought as dispensable in the other way round. Thus the Hippocrene is not quite virginal. Nevertheless an attractive object on the wall, too.

And last, but not least, beyond all investigated above the manifestly proposed, but just so obviously ran offside and ergo dismissed reverence for

in his continual presence in the grandiose Basilica St. Ulric and Afra (see i. a. the corresponding fine woodcut with the Saint in the Hortus Conclusus in front of a landscape with crosier and book with fish in Berno von Reichenau’s und Adilbertus von Augsburg’s “Gloriosorum christi confessorum Udalrici & Symperti: nec non beatissimae martyris Aphrae, Augustanae sedis patronorum quam fidelissimorum historiae”, Augsburg 1516, but also Gabriel Spitzel’s portrait of Johann Christoph Thenn, protestant parson of the Ridinger age at St. Ulric, worked in mezzotint by Johann Jacob Ridinger).

Reverence left undone but also considering the three famous fountains of the city erected between 1593 + 1602 “as main ornaments of Augsburg” (Meyers Konv.-Lex., 4^th ed., II, 87/II).

Offer-no. 13,279 / EUR  1022. / Export price EUR  971. (c. US$ 1536.) + shipping

– – – – The Same in one of the ten copies in black numbered in Arabic.
Offer-no. 13,280 / EUR  868. / Export price EUR  825. (c. US$ 1305.) + shipping

„ … Die (vom Schwiegervater geerbten Par force-Jagd) Ridinger … habe ich in meinem Arbeitszimmer bestens neben einem Gobelin plaziert und möchte sie nicht mehr verkaufen. Besten Dank und ein Kompliment an Ihr Haus, dass sie nach so vielen Jahren noch an mich gedacht haben “

(Herr K.-A. H., 2. Februar 2004)

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