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Lot Essay
In its beginnings, Dürer's Great Triumphal Chariot of Maximilian I formed part of a project for a truly monumental woodcut of a triumphal procession, consisting of about two hundred blocks, which involved several workshops and numerous artists, including Albrecht Altdorfer, Dürer himself and his pupil Hans Springinklee, Hans Burgkmair, Leonard Beck and others. It was the Emperor himself, well aware of the possibilities of distribution and the political power of prints, who devised the idea of large printed triumph as part of an even larger program of 'propaganda' prints to celebrate and commemorate his reign.
Inspired by earlier, actual victorious entries, such as those of King Louis XII of France in Italy, by Mantegna's Triumph of Caesar, and ultimately by Roman stone reliefs of triumphal processions spiraling around column's such as Trajan's Column, a printed depiction of an idealized, yet contemporary triumphal procession served to demonstrate a continuity between the Roman Empire of old and the 'Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation' and to thereby legitimize Maximilian's claim to the Imperial crown.
Dürer and his workshop were entrusted with the centre piece of this enormous project, the depiction of the Emperor and his immediate entourage. The project however must have proofed impossible to coordinate and in the end was never completed. Dürer eventually decided to complete The Great Triumphal Chariot as a separate work and, together with his friend Willibald Pirckheimer, developed his own pictorial program, which showed the Emperor as an ideal prince, accompanied by a host of allegorical figures representing the virtues, with the wheels of his splendid chariot representing the foundations of his reign: Magnificentia, Dignitas, Gloria, Honor.
The Chariot is a feat of bravura woodcutting, worthy the grandness of its subject, yet due to its scale and the ephemeral nature of the project, very few sets seems to have been preserved and complete, early examples are extremely rare.
Inspired by earlier, actual victorious entries, such as those of King Louis XII of France in Italy, by Mantegna's Triumph of Caesar, and ultimately by Roman stone reliefs of triumphal processions spiraling around column's such as Trajan's Column, a printed depiction of an idealized, yet contemporary triumphal procession served to demonstrate a continuity between the Roman Empire of old and the 'Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation' and to thereby legitimize Maximilian's claim to the Imperial crown.
Dürer and his workshop were entrusted with the centre piece of this enormous project, the depiction of the Emperor and his immediate entourage. The project however must have proofed impossible to coordinate and in the end was never completed. Dürer eventually decided to complete The Great Triumphal Chariot as a separate work and, together with his friend Willibald Pirckheimer, developed his own pictorial program, which showed the Emperor as an ideal prince, accompanied by a host of allegorical figures representing the virtues, with the wheels of his splendid chariot representing the foundations of his reign: Magnificentia, Dignitas, Gloria, Honor.
The Chariot is a feat of bravura woodcutting, worthy the grandness of its subject, yet due to its scale and the ephemeral nature of the project, very few sets seems to have been preserved and complete, early examples are extremely rare.