Johann Elias Ridinger (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). (Fights of Killing Animals) or The Big Five. Set of 8 sheets. Etched/engraved by Johann Elias (1-4) and Martin Elias (1730 Augsburg 1780) Ridinger. (1760.) Large fol. (plate size c. 38 x 29.5 cm). Boards covered with laid paper and on front cover stamped in brown “Johann Elias Ridinger Anno 1760. / Mit beygefügter vortrefflichen Poesie des hochberühmten Herrn Barthold Heinrich Brockes” in slipcase.
Thienemann ( „Rare“, 1856! ) + Schwarz 716-723; Cat. Weigel 16,545 ( „Old impressions now to be found only rarely“, 1847!) + XXVIII (1857), 40 A (of C); Coll. Friesen 1030 (2 sheets only, 1847); Silesian R. coll. at Boerner XXXIX, 1914 (“Fine set”, 1885); Coll. Reich auf Biehla 148 (“Some slightly stained”, 1894); Coll. Coppenrath 1564 (margins partially added, 1889); (Ridinger) Cat. Helbing XXXIV (1900), 1259 as “Very rare set” (with Th. 717 in a later impression only); Schwerdt III, 143; Stubbe, Ridinger, 1966, pp. 16 f. + 25 f. with plts. 33 f.; exhibition cat. Augsburg 1967 (three sheets only) 75-77 + ills. 15, erroneously attributing all engravings to Martin Elias; Ridinger catalogues Kielce, 1997, 126 f. (Th. 720 f.) + Darmstadt, 1999, IV.1-IV.7 (without sheet 8), fully illustrated. – With the Brockes verses (1-4) and the ones copying those resp.
“Of this excellent work eight sheets have been published … They make themselves scarce and already in the catalogues of Herzberg (1824) and so forth only the first four are mentioned” (Thienemann, 1856, 716-719). But already in the contemporaneously formed legendary Ridinger folios of the marvelous Pembroke Library in Wilton House, purchased supposedly by the 10th Earl of Pembroke in Paris in 1768, the last four are missing.
Here , however , present completely in the very fine early impressions of a dissolved contemporary album with wide upper and lower, at the sides differently less wide margins. The majority of these, partially also just here and there, mostly only slightly foxspotted. Two tiny tears in the lower margin backed acid-freely.
Offer no. 15,449 / price on request