915/​56

Melchior Lorck (b. Flensburg 1527, d. Copenhagen 1588)

Frederick II, King of Denmark. Bust in armour. 1582. Signed in print below left Melchior Lorichs ad uiuum delineabat Ao. 1580. Et in ære Sculpebat Ao. 1582. Engraving. Plate size 44.4×32 cm.

Reference: Hollstein / German engravings, etchings and woodcuts c.1400–1700, no. 23. Erik Fischer, Copenhagen 2009, no. 1582,1.

The Latin text can be roughly translated as follows: Melchior Lorch drew the picture (of the king) 1580. And in (the king's) honor he made a copper engraving 1582.

Melchior Lorck’s known oeuvre made during his service for King Frederik II is scarce: A painted full-length portrait, a unique woodcut that seems to have meant as frontispiece for the Order of the Elephant, and the present portrait from 1582, engraved after a drawing from 1580.

In ”At brande Frederik 2.: Om Melchior Lorcks kobberstik af Frederik 2. (Branding Frederik II: On the engraved portrait by Melchior Lorck), (2006), senior research curator at the National Gallery of Denmark Hanne Kolind Poulsen suggests (in Danish): "the“cranachesque” schematic and de-personalised, almost petrified, character as a kind of Merckbild, and to “be understood as Lorck’s – and Frederik II's – visual strategy for branding the king as a true Lutheran monarch. Frederik’s interest in such a branding was rooted in his conflict with the electorate Saxony over his support to Philippism against the new Lutheran orthodoxy.”

Literature; Hanne Kolind Poulsen, “Branding Frederik II: On the engraved portrait by Melchior Lorck” in Renæssanceforum Vol. 2, 2006 (Nordic Journal of Renaissance Studies).

Additional Remarks

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Auction

Paintings & Drawings, 18 September 2023

Category
Estimate

30,000–35,000 DKK

Sold

Price realised

24,000 DKK