.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Based on a drawing attributed to Andrea Mantegna in the collection of the Bibiothèque de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, The Descent into Limbo belongs, together with The Flagellation with a Pavement (B. 1), The Deposition (B. 4), and The Entombment with Four Birds (B. 2) to a group of engravings relating to the Passion and Resurrection of Christ.
The composition centres on the figure of Christ standing on the shattered gates of Hell, holding the staff and banner of the Resurrection. Mantegna’s radical innovation of depicting Christ from behind, directly in front of the abyss and not from the side as in Byzantine and Italian antecedents, has the dramatic effect of involving the viewer in Christ’s act of salvation, as he reaches down to liberate the souls of the dead. In the Byzantine Church the Descent into Limbo was synonymous with the Resurrection, an image of His victory over Sin and Death.
'But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive’ (1 Corinthians 15).
This act of reversing the Fall is traditionally reflected in the order in which Christ frees the souls: first Adam and Eve, then the Patriarchs and the Prophets; a prayerful throng emerging from the depths of Hell. Mantegna’s representation, however, is more nuanced and emotionally complex than earlier iterations. The moment of his triumphant arrival in Limbo has passed. Adam and Eve, along with an unidentified figure, have already been freed and stand dejectedly to the right of Christ, while the Saviour continues his redemptive work. Beset by the routed devils and the clamour of their sounding horns, Mantegna’s newly liberated captives seem traumatised and penitential, rather than joyful and relieved. Only the figure of a young man bearing a cross at left, identified as the thief to whom Christ said ‘Today shalt thou be with me in paradise’, stands undismayed by the devilish antics. The desolate landscape and the formidable gateway to the abyss draw upon descriptions of Hades in classical mythology, evoking heroic tales of long and perilous journeys into the land of the dead.
While Mantegna’s invention of this extraordinary composition is undisputed, the attribution of the engraving has long been controversial and remains uncertain. David Landau noted that the engraving and drawing correspond so closely in scale and detail that the image must have been transferred to the plate via a tracing or some other mechanical means. Unusually however, the engraver of The Descent into Limbo departed from the original composition in places: by extending the height of the rock façade and elaborating its cracked surface; by completing the figure of Eve to the right of Christ; by altering the features of the central demon and by re-positioning his left arm to accommodate the curved shape of his instrument. Although it has traditionally been ascribed to Mantegna’s workshop or school, Landau in 1992 proposed that The Descent into Limbo be added to the corpus of seven plates generally attributed to Mantegna himself, arguing that this degree of variation from the drawing was not indicative of a copyist. This view was contested by Suzanne Boorsch, who not only rejected the re-attribution but challenged Mantegna’s authorship of any engravings, suggesting instead that the entire engraved oeuvre was the work of an unidentified professional engraver. The discovery of a contract from 1475 between the artist and the goldsmith Gian Marco Cavalli (circa 1454–after 1508) in the state archives of Mantua in 2000 confirmed Mantegna’s collaboration with at least one engraver. This remarkable document did not, however, specify any prints made by Cavalli - nor did it rule out that Mantegna had made some engravings himself. Following this documentary evidence, Shelley Fletcher in 2001 published the results of her microscopic examination of the seven plates traditionally attributed to Mantegna and the four questionable plates (Print Quarterly, XXIII, no. 4, 2001). The comparison revealed subtle but distinct differences in the engraving technique between the two groups: she identified a single hand on the plates of the core group - which she considered to be Mantegna’s – and two separate hands on the four additional plates including The Descent into Limbo - presumably Cavalli and another, unknown engraver.
Whoever the engraver may have been, it is clear that the engravings were executed in the immediate surroundings of the artist and that he retained ultimate control over the plates. In 1996 Rodolfo Signorini published the estate inventory of Mantegna’s son Ludovico of 1510, which listed several of his father’s engraved plates, including plates of the core group as well as others, amongst them The Descent into Limbo and The Flagellation with a Pavement – the two prints being engraved on the two sides of the same plate.
The further history of the plates is equally intriguing. Paper evidence has shown that the majority of impressions – but only of those present in Ludovico’s estate – are not on Italian, but on French paper, leading Landau and Boorsch to conclude that the plates must have found their way from Mantua to France, and were reprinted there around 1540-45. While there are a few documented impressions of The Descent into Limbo on early Italian paper, for instance at The Cleveland Museum of Art, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the majority are on French paper of the mid-16th century. The extreme scarcity of surviving 15th century impressions seems to preclude any sizeable lifetime edition. Hind recorded a total of 45 impressions, only nine of which were in private hands at the time of publication in 1948. At least four of these have since entered public collections. The present impression thus offers an exceptional opportunity to acquire one of the great engravings of the Italian Renaissance - as Suzanne Boorsch concluded: 'What cannot be doubted is that these prints, translating as they do Mantegna’s incisive drawing style into the intractable medium of the copper plate, are the climax of 15th century Italian printmaking and fully merit the admiration they have elicited over the centuries’. (S. Boorsch, ‘Mantegna and his Printmakers’, Andrea Mantegna, 1992, p. 64).
This fine impression was acquired by Barbara Piasecka Johnson in 1989 to complement the famous painting of the same subject, formerly from the collection of Sir Stephen Courtauld, which she had purchased only two years earlier. Both the painting and the engraving were included in the Mantegna exhibition at the Royal Academy, London, in 1992.
We would like to thank Catherine Jenkins, London, for her help in cataloguing this lot and for confirming the origin and date of the paper.