WENCESLAUS HOLLAR

1607 Prague – 1677 London

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Portrait of Marie de Medici - 1648

Etching. Size of sheet: 7.3 x 5.1 cm. Trimmed to the plate. Signed in plate WHollar fec./1648

New Hollstein (Hollar Part I) 1022; Pennington 1982, 1709.

An excellent impression of this miniature portrait with thread margins.

£1,100.-

Wenceslaus Hollar: Portrait of Marie de Medici, 1648

Marie de’Medici, queen of France, was the one who commissioned Peter Paul Rubens a famous 21-piece series (now in Louvre) glorifying her life and reign. Mother of 6, among whom were Louis XIII and Henrietta Maria (the one who married the ill-fated Charles I of England who was executed in 1649), she died in exile and in relative poverty in Cologne in 1642. Ironically, she left her last possession, a pet parrot, to Richelieu, the man whose assassination she had been planning during the last years of her life.

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