Lot 125
  • 125

Herman Saftleven

Estimate
8,000 - 12,000 USD
bidding is closed

Description

  • Herman Saftleven
  • Cartouche design, with a snail
  • Black chalk and brown and gray wash;
    signed and dated, within the cartouche: Herman. SaftLeven. / Anno. / .1664.

Provenance

Sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby Mak van Waay, 18 November 1980, lot 123;
Lodewijk Houthakker, Amsterdam (L.3893)

Literature

W. Schulz, Herman Saftleven 1609-1685. Leben und Werke, Berlin/New York 1982, p. 490, no. 1453, reproduced fig. 239;
P. Fuhring, Design into Art. Drawings for Architecture and Ornament. The Lodewijk Houthakker Collection, London 1989, p. 145, no. 102

Catalogue Note

Peter Fuhring (loc. cit.) speculates that the inclusion of the snail as part of this design could be a pun on the artist's name, Saft Leven meaning, literally 'Soft Life', an apt description of a snail.  This appears to be the only known ornament design by Saftleven, whose drawings otherwise consist of landscapes, or elaborate watercolours of flowers (the latter made almost exclusively at the end of his life, during the 1680s).  Wolfgang Schulz (loc. cit.) suggested that the drawing might have been made as some kind of frontispiece design for the series of views of the Rhine that Saftleven made for the famous Amsterdam merchant and patron, Laurens van der Hem.