Expansis manibus vicit Crucifixus ab alto Tergemina ligno: nostra est victoria: pestem.
Copper engraving (40.4 x 25.4 cm, platemark 30.2 x 20.6 cm). Engraved caption under the image. A few very light spots on upper margin, far from platemark. Excellent. Separately published apotropaic Remondini print intended to ward off the plague and protect the household. It depicts a crucified Christ surrounded by two angels, who each hold an oval cartouche depicting biblical scenes with accompanying Latin quotes, on the left the Abraham and Isaac story from Genesis 22 (“Non extendas manum tuam supra puerum”) and on the right the origin of Passover from Exodus 12 (“Erit autem nobis sanguis in ignum edibus”). On top of the Cross is a placard with the letters “INRI” from the Latin “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum” (“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”), which according to biblical accounts was placed there by order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator; it is often depicted in art and religious depictions of the crucifixion. Behind the Cross are a few trees and rooftops of the city of Jerusalem, and at its foot is a horned and winged demon, a skeleton, and Adam holding an apple with a dragon-like snake curling beneath him, all apparently startled by the light that emanates from behind the Cross. The Latin title, “Expansis manibus vicit Crucifixus ab alto Tergemina ligno: nostra est victoria: pestem” (“With outstretched hands the Crucifix conquered from the high tree of Tergemina; victory over the plague is ours”). Although not as deadly as in previous centuries, the plague remained a constant threat in Europe during the 18th century. The disease appeared in Marseille from 1720 to 1722, in Eastern Europe from 1738 to 1740, in Russia from 1770 to 1772, and in smaller but still deadly epidemics in Constantinople and the Balkans until the mid-19th century. For more than two centuries, the Remondini family operated a printmaking empire from the Veneto town of Bassano del Grappa. Founded in 1657, the Remondini firm focused on publishing large quantity of prints of a modest quality intended to appeal to the tastes and the limited financial means of the increasingly literate middle and lower classes. By the 1730s the firm owned 38 presses and employed perhaps 1,000 workers, making it one of the largest printing operations of the entire hand-press era. The Remondini contracted with large numbers of traveling agents, salesmen and peddlers to disseminate their popular imagery far from their base in northern Italy. The 1772 catalogue issued by the Remondini firm records single-sheet religious and devotional prints depicting local subjects from Greece to the Americas grouped together under the heading “francesine” (Catalogo, p. xxiv; cf. Zanini, p. 74). Various lots of these prints (depicting crucifixes, Marian imagery, saints, etc.) could be bought uncolored or, at more than double the price, “painted with very fine colors…and decorated with gold and silver” (Catalogo, p. xxiv). Although Remondini single-sheet prints of this sort were presumably produced in large quantities and over a long period of time, they are quite rare today, a fact certainly due to the fugitive nature of loose prints, their intended destination far from their place of printing, and the types of use for which they were intended (e.g., being tacked to the wall for private devotion).
* M. Infelise, I Remondini di Bassano (1980); Remondini, Catalogo delle stampe in rame e delle varie qualità de carte privilegiate (1772); C.A. Zotti Minici, Le stampe popolari dei Remondini (Venice, 1994), no. 659.
Price: $1,450.00