Lot 70: Giulio Sanuto (active 1540-1588)

Bacchanale in a Forest (Bartsch 5; Passavant 5; Bury 3)
engraving, circa 1550, on two vertically joined sheets of paper, one with an Anchor in a Circle watermark, a slightly worn impression of this extremely rare print, showing wear mainly along the lower plate edge, with 4-6 mm. margins on all sides, a horizontal central fold mainly visible on the right sheet, a few very short tears at the sheet edges, generally in very good condition
P. 455 x 558 mm., S. 465 x 570 mm.

M. Bury, Giulio Sanuto - A Venetian Engraver of the Sixteenth Century, Edinburgh, 1990, no. 3, passim.

Only very few works of the Venetian engraver Guilio Sanuto are known today, and even less is known of the artist himself. He was born an illegitimate son of the Cavaliere Francesco di Angelo Sanuto, and his brother was the cartographer Livio Sanuto, with whom he collaborated. No more than twelve engravings and a small number of maps can be attributed with any certainty to him, including the massive Apollo and Marsyas, measuring over 1.30 meters wide, and a highly important terrestrial globe. Whilst Sanuto's engravings are generally after the designs of other artists, he chose very ambitious subjects and executed them on a grand scale. The present work, Bacchanale in a Forest, is based on a pen and ink drawing on parchment (Florence, Uffizi, 15101F) attributed to Domenico Campagnola (1500-1564).
On stylistic grounds, Michael Bury believes Sanuto's Bacchanale to precede his Venus and Adonis after Titian, dated 1559. It therefore marks the beginning of his mature style.
Bury records only three impressions of this engraving in public collections: one in the British Museum, London; one in the Ashmolean, Oxford; and a third in the Albertina, Vienna. In addition, one impression is known to be in a private collection, and one was sold at Phillips, London, 26 June 2000 (lot 190).

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