This is another of those scenes which surely presupposes a (lost) print or maybe woodcut illustration in a book? Is the subject from some chivalric Romance I should know? It looks decidedly old-fashioned by this date. Is it from Ariosto, perhaps? — cf. the verses from the French translation in the Erlenwein album example below. I know of 6 examples so far, ranging in date from 1607 to the 1620s.
From the album of Andreas Huber, dated 1607. The Lady holds a flaming heart. Accompanying French motto Penser plus que dire [Think more/rather than speak] Stuttgart, WLB, cod. don. 899, image no.339from the album of Scotsman Michael Balfour, dated entries 1596-1610. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS 16000from the album of Wolfgang Balthasar Sebald, 1613. Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, MS Thott 402, octavo, image 316 SEE NEXT for full pagefrom the album of Johann Carl Erlenwein, 1616. Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, W922, p110. The verses in the lefthand column are from a passage in Ariosto translated into Frenchfrom the album of Johann Sixt Ludel, dated entries 1621-9. Here our hero ho ladder to climb up tock-face, but the same broken wooden bridge! Weimar, Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, Stb 301. orphaned leaf from the Frommann Collection, Stuttgart, WLB, cod. hist. fol. 889-12, f.100v.
Variant?
I have foolishly forgotten to annotate where I found this image below! Any offers? Is it the same motif? Here we seem, strip-cartoon fashion, to have 3 scenes starring our hero which read from right to left. Some version of the rescue of Andromeda guarded by the dragon by Perseus? (as a single scene, a very popular album image). My best attempt at reading the lettering above the building’s archway is TZIMP EREICH
And is this related?
from the album of Johann Joachim Prack von Asch, dated entries 1587-1612. Los Angeles, The Getty Research Institute, 2013.M.24, f.258r.
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