ERHARD SCHON
CIRCA 1491-1542138 A Turkish Procession
Pen and brown ink; H: 23.6 cm (9^5 /i6 in.); W: 37 cm
(i4^9 /i6 in.)
89.GA. 8
MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS! None.
PROVENANCE: Sale, Gutekunst and Klipstein, Bern,
November 22, 1956, lot 284; private collection (sale, Ga-
lerie Kornfeld, Bern, June 15, 1988, lot 215); art market,
Boston.
EXHIBITIONS: None.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Stewart, "New Drawings by Erhard
Schôn and His Circle," Master Drawings 26, no. 3 (Au-
tumn 1988), pp. 235; 237, n. 17; 238.SÜLEYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT INVADED EUROPE IN
1532 and met with defeat largely because of the successful
Christian defense of Guns in Austria. Probably in the
same year, a large three-block woodcut was issued after
Schôn's design with the superscript Ein klag zu Gott I uber
die grausamliche manigfaltigen wüterey I dess Blutdirstigen
Türcken umbgnedige hilff.^1 The present drawing is a design
for the middle block showing the sultan in procession;
the left-hand block depicts a throng of European captives
led by Turkish soldiers, and that on the right shows the
city of Guns. The drawing is about the same size as the
middle section of the print and in the same direction. Al-
though extremely close to the woodcut, the fact that it is
not a copy is indicated by numerous subtle differences be-
tween the two, including the spatial construction, which
is more friezelike in the .drawing and tipped upward in
the print. The ornamental trappings of the sultan's
throne and canopy are also more extensively worked out
in the woodcut. The drawing for the left-hand block,
which recently appeared at auction (Christie's, London,
January 12, 1988, lot 91, as Circle of Virgil Solis), is also
in the same direction as the print and contains similar de-
viations from it. These are the only known surviving de-
signs for the numerous broadsheets produced by Schôn.i. M. Geisberg, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut: 1500-1550,
rev. and ed. W. L. Strauss (New York, 1974), vol. 4, no.
0.1251-1253.308 CENTRAL EUROPEAN SCHOOL • SCHÔN