Schurman, Anna Maria van (1607-1678)

Self portrait Anna Maria van Schurman (Schuurman).

Name: Self portrait Anna Maria van Schurman (Schuurman).
SKU: 62016
Price: 900.00 EUR
Availability: OutOfStock

In this self portrait Anna Maria van Schurman combined the techniques of engraving and etching. She depicted herself wearing an elegant dress embellished with lace on the bodice and sleeves. She convincingly rendered the illusion of spatial depth by shading the inner rim of the oval frame and placing herself behind a ledge, which pushes her figure farther back into the picture plane.
That ledge also obscures her hands. Van Schurman hid her hands in her first engraved self-portrait (1633), as well, for which a correspondent, the poet and statesman Constantijn Huygens, chided her. He admonished van Schurman for being ashamed of her ink-stained hands, which he said “have never found their equal.”
As the inscription on the oval frame tells us, the artist realized this palte in 1640 when she was 33 years old. The Latin inscription at the bottom is addressed to her friends, to whom she sent this portrait. It reads: ‘See my likeness depicted in this portrait:/May your favor perfect the work where art has failed.’ [Cernitis hic picta nostros in imagine vultus: / Si negat ars forma, gratia vestra dabit]. Signed on bottom right with her initials: ‘A.M. á S. Fec.’.

SKU: 62016

Etching and engraving on laid paper; trimmed closed to plate mark; total: 203 x 156 mm; state IV/4, some dirt and smudges along the margins; some dirt on the verso; two tiny worm holes the size of small pin holes. Little scratch mark on the forehead; beautiful impression; Hollstein 3.

€ 1.089,00 (€ 900,00 ex. btw)

Out of stock