“ The Instrument is entitled
to the Superiority Price before all ”
Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). The Fully Tuned Charming Harpsichord. Richly draped young lady looking out of the picture playing the harpsichord to her own singing. In a garden room with tiled floor in the Dutch manner under widely taken up heavy curtain as since the Middle Ages a bearer of the secret and concealed and repeatedly used by Ridinger since the title sheet to the riding school of 1722 at the open way out to the park from where the master’s cypresses greet. On the right side of the picture another high chair, richly covered by further curtain, on which lies an open music-book. Mezzotint. Inscribed: Ioh. Elias Ridinger excud. Aug. Vindel., otherwise as above (in German) and following. 51.7 x 42.2 cm.
Provenance
Counts Faber-Castell
their Ridinger sale 1958
with its lot no. 98
on the underlay carton
Radulf Count of Castell-Rüdenhausen
(1922-2004)
Thienemann + Schwarz (vol. I, plate XLV) 1254; Counts Faber-Castell (1958) 98.
Not in Weigel, Art Stock Catalogue I-XXVIII (1838/57) , Silesian Ridinger collection at Boerner XXXIX (1885) , Coppenrath Collection (1889 f.), Reich auf Biehla (1894) , Georg Hamminger Collection (1895) , Helbing XXXIV (Works by J. E. and M. E. Ridinger; 1900), Rosenthal, Ridinger list 126 (1940). – German-Latin subtext.
“ The instrument is entitled to the superiority price before all ,
For all voices one brings forth on the self-same ;
Also if one plays alone , so its sounding has
A quite enchanting pleasure for heart and ear . ”
„ As mediator of musical ideas par excellence the harpsichord is for the age that concerns us here (1st quarter of the 18th century) what the lute was in the middle of the 17th century. The harpsichord is a ‘melody and harmony instrument’ whose strings are struck by pressing the keys of a keyboard … ”
(Florence Gétreau, [Watteau and the Music], in Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684-1721, 1984/85, p. 538).
The pictorially and thematically very charming rare large sheet
completely backed by three different papers because of damages: in the middle widely smoothed the centerfold is torn on the sides with longer fine trace of breaking especially on the left, two small traces of tears in box pleat upper right, the left upper corner little impairingly squeezed as well; minimal character loss in the left outside text, defective places in the narrow white paper margin running about. The very fine velvety quality of the impression optically conditionally lessened by quite a number of stipple-like tiny holes, whereas two stained places of potential glue penetration in the right picture margin are barely conspicuous.
“ The mezzotints are almost not available in the trade anymore
… all worked by and after Joh. El. Ridinger (are) that rare that they are to be found almost only in some public, grand print rooms. I have come across most of the described ones only in the famous print room at Dresden … ”
(Thienemann, 1856!, pages VIII + 270).
For according to the expert Sandrart (1675) the technically conditioned extremely fast wearing off mezzotint plate permits 50-60 good impressions only.
Offer no. 14,950 / EUR 530. / export price EUR 504. (c. US$ 686.) + shipping
„ … Toll, die Verbindung der Kunst mit berühmten Männern der Geschichte. Dazu die qualitative Aufmachung … “
(Frau U. K., 2. Januar 2010)