Among the loose prints in the Collection of Albrecht Haupt there is a previously unknown state of an engraving that documents an intermediate stage during the printing process.
The sheet shows the antique statue of the Nile, which was found in Rome in 1513 near S. Maria sopra Minerva and then placed in the papal statue court of the Belvedere in the Vatican. The engraver frames his depiction of the reclining coloss with the figurative reliefs that adorn three sides of the plinth, while the water and bank are drawn down to the lower edge of the plate.
The sculpture, which is now fully restored, was excavated in a damaged condition. Especially most of the delicate "children" who frolic and climb around on the muscular body were only preserved in fragments or completely missing. These are reconstructed to varying degrees in the engraving in order to keep visible the incomplete state but to convey, at the same time, the detailed and playful character of the work.
The sheet shows a state before the writing and with numerous deviations from the first known state of this plate. Apart from the long inscription in capitals, which will later be added to the left half of the sheet (and in which Antonio Lafreri will be named as the editor), only 14 of the 16 children of the Nile are depicted. Also not yet executed are the ears of wheat in the wreath on the head of the Nile or the decoration of the cornucopia, which he embraces with his left hand. The awkward-looking spot in the area of the feet, where two of the children seem to shake hands, marks a breaking edge where the head of a crocodile has been added in the later states of the plate and on the restored sculpture.
The fact that this sheet is the intermediate stage of a working process is also confirmed on the verso, where the traced sketch of a Madonna's head indicates that the paper was reused in an artist’s workshop.
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