Heads of two young women. Varie figurae.

The immensely prolific and talented Czech printmaker Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) was employed between 1636 and 1644 as an artist and cataloguer in the household of Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, one of the greatest art collectors of his era. The Earl, a victim of the English Civil War, fled overseas and died in 1646; Hollar himself moved with his family to Antwerp in 1644, where this etching would have been made. The return of political stability led to Hollar's own return to London in 1652, where he lived and worked until his death.

In 1645, shortly after moving to Antwerp, Hollar produced a series of 13 etchings after Leonardo da Vinci, entitled Variae figurae et probae artem picturae incipiendae iuventuti utiles (Varied and wholesome images useful for the young person who is beginning the art of painting), with an additional title page which is Hollar's invention. Consisting of studies of heads, including grotesques, its relationship with the considerably larger series, 'Characters and deformities after Leonardo', as established by Hollar expert Richard Pennington and also published in 1645, has yet to be satisfactorily resolved.

This etching is an exceptional one, given Leonardo's abnormal norm! The two closely related young women have beautiful features and short, wavy hair - the right hand one with a perfect classical profile. The heads would be far more at home in a devotional composition than in a family of Leonardo grotesques. Hollar was highly susceptible to beautiful women and was doubtless attracted to the original source.

Te Papa also has an impression of the title plate of Varie figurae (1869-0001-206).  

See:

Richard Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Wenceslaus Hollar 1607-1677 (Cambridge, 1982), p. 288 (no. 1723).

Science Source, http://images.sciencesource.com/preview/15667240/JA8489.html

Mark Stocker, http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/tag/wenceslaus-hollar/

Dr Mark Stocker             Curator, Historical International Art       April 2017