Johann Elias Ridinger (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). 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, 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 bistre: Jo El. Riedinger (sic!) inv et del 1732. 837 x 533 mm + 32 x 20 mm additional inscription field laterally lower right.
Provenance: Counts Faber-Castell, their Ridinger sale 1958 with its lot no. 2 in red on the underlay carton.
One of the most outstanding Ridinger drawings as 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).
The spelling of the signature (at Faber-Castell read erroneously as 1737) with ie in harmony with the – obviously being unpublished – also imperial-sized one of a Roman Emperor on Horseback Hamminger 1932 („Joan Eli Riedinger del. 1734“), but also with the engraving Th. 249 of c. 1738/40 worked by himself and inscribed with ie, too. Contrary to the hitherto common opinion that drawings inscribed with ie are to be assign to other hands Ridinger occasionally has added an e to the i at least in those years. This corresponding also to the reference of a Riedinger descendant given quite recently, the name would have been written variably over the times. Our former cataloging of the present Daniel drawing with inscription by publisher hands only is in such a way unfounded. Because for the Roman Emperor on Horseback a publisher is just not known.
Belonging to the largest-sized of the drawn œuvre the drawing follows the bible’s tradition Book of Daniel, chap. 6, and is not provable here even as engraving in no other copy since Schwarz (1910). Engraved it was expressively missing thus with Counts Faber-Castell (1958), too.
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 on 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).
Offer no. 14,859 / price on request