Unrivaled – Unrepeatable

THE IMPERIALS

Johann Elias Ridinger (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). The Par Force Hunting of a Stag and how He is bagged. / How the Wild Boar is hunted and couped de grâce. 2-plate set. Etchings with engraving. Inscribed: Johann Elias Ridinger inven. fecit et excud Aug. Vind(el)., otherwise in German-Latin parallel text as before. 54.1-54.6 x 75.6-75.8 cm.

Thienemann (“so one cannot admire these master pieces enough”) + Schwarz 67-68 and Schwerdt III, 135 (“… of the largest and most artistic plates engraved by Ridinger himself”). – For both Thienemann and Schwerdt they are

“ the largest and supposedly most beautiful as well

Ridinger has delivered …

so that one cannot praise these masterpieces enough .”

Their attribute as “the largest” is to be supplemented to the effect that Schwerdt III, 149 records as to be called a rarissimum a Saint Hubert after Caspar Sing which with 85 x 61.8 cm indeed surpasses present Imperials, though having only Ridinger’s, at least, publisher’s “excudit“, yet should be from his own hands. With 75.5 x 91.8 cm sheet size here actually the most monumental sheet of the œuvre, though still engraved by third party, is, however, the early “Siege and Conquest of Halicarnassos” (Th. 917) from the Alexander cycle. But in their artistic and

as one ( !! ) plate works

additionally technical dash

the pendants

reckon to the most beautiful hunting pictures

among the hunting prints of all times pure and simple .

At the same time after abolishment of the par force hunt they are the final graphical representation of that hunting-historical zenith.

“ By their style they should have been created at the end of the 40s … Both … are repeatedly named in literature as the most perfect works by Ridinger ”

(Rolf Biedermann in the 1967 Augsburg Ridinger Catalog, no. 67).
Ref. no. 14,930 / in stock – not catalogued / request description & offer