Primo Copy Of Piranese's Imaginary Prisons $270,000-$400,000 At Christie's

by Stephen J. Gertz

"I need to produce great ideas, and I believe that if I were commissioned to design a new universe, I would be mad enough to undertake it" (Piranese).

A magnificent copy of the scarce first edition of Italian artist and printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranese's (1720-1778) celebrated suite of designs for an imaginary prison, Invenzioni Capric di Carceri (Rome: Giovanni Bouchard, n.d. [c. 1750]) - which has had an enormous influence upon literature - is being offered by Christie's-Paris in its Importants livres anciens, livres d'artistes & manuscrits sale, April 30, 2014.

With all of its fourteen beautifully designed and etched plates in their first impression, second state (except one), before numbering and retouching, on un-watermarked paper, and in excellent condition, it is estimated to sell for $270,000-$400,000.

The plates depict fanciful subterranean vaults and machines somewhat Kafkaesque in nature, with surreal distortion later found in the work of M.C. Escher, featuring bizarre, labyrinthine structures that are chemerical mash-ups of monumental architecture, epic caprices depicting "ancient Roman or Baroque ruins converted into fantastic, visionary dungeons filled with mysterious scaffolding and instruments of torture" (Encyclopedia Britannica).

Only the engravings of Goya and William Blake have inspired writers as much as those of Piranesi's Carceri.  Their roots lie in the theatrical dioramas that Piranese designed for the Galli da Bibiena family of stage set designers in Bologna as well as those for his father, a stonemason.

The rare second edition, later published by Piranese himself with the plates reworked, contains an extra two plates yet here "in Bouchard's edition the plates are more lightly etched throughout with none of the strong contrasts of light and shade seen in the later edition. There is a wonderful simplicity in the design in the early states, and none shows this quality in greater beauty than plate four of the series" ( Hind ).

The haunting, dream-like quality to the plates fired the imagination of the Romantics.

"The fascination of Piranese's Imaginary Prisons for the literary mind is attested by transmutations in story, poem, and essay. In a recent attempt to explain the appeal, Aldous Huxley remarks that the etchings express obscure psychological truths: they represent 'metaphysical prisons, whose seat is within the mind, whose walls are made of nightmare and incomprehension, whose chains are anxiety and their racks a sense of personal and even generic guilt.' Whatever the explanation may be, the influence of the Prisons on writers of the last two centuries, particularly on the Romantics, will one day make a chapter of literary history which will include the names of Walpole, Beckford, Coleridge, De Quincey, Balzac, Gautier, Baudelaire, and doubtless many others" (Paul F. Jamieson. Musset, de Quincey, and Piranese. Modern Language Notes, Vol. 71, No. 2, Feb. 1956).

"Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist...which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever: some of them (I describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) representing vast Gothic halls, on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels, cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, etc., etc., expressive of enormous power put forth, and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a staircase; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi himself: follow the stairs a little further, and you perceive it come to a sudden abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him" (Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater).

The Plates:

I - Title
II - The Round Tower
III - The Grand Piazza
IV - The Smoking Fire
V - The Drawbridge
VI - The Staircase with Trophies
VII - The Giant Wheel
VIII - Prisoners on a Projecting Platform
IX - The Arch with a Shell Ornament
X - The Sawhorse
XI - The Well
XII - The Gothic Arch
XIII - The Pier with a Lamp
XIV - The Pier with Chains

"One of the greatest printmakers of the eighteenth century, Piranesi always considered himself an architect. The son of a stonemason and master builder, he received practical training in structural and hydraulic engineering from a maternal uncle who was employed by the Venetian waterworks, while his brother, a Carthusian monk, fired the aspiring architect with enthusiasm for the history and achievements of the ancient Romans. Piranesi also received a thorough background in perspective construction and stage design. Although he had limited success in attracting architectural commissions, this diverse training served him well in the profession that would establish his fame" (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

This copy, formerly in the collection of the National Gallery of Art (with small stamp on the back of each plate with stamp cancellation), was last seen at Christie's-London July 2, 2003 when it sold for $140, 506 (£83,650; €101,704).

Grégoire Dupond created the below animated film for Factum Arte, based upon Piranesi's engravings for Invenzioni Capric di Carceri, as a walk through the artist's amazing spaces:

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Images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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Thomas De Quincey Writes While High As A Kite

by Stephen J. Gertz

"I was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery of opium-taking: and, what I took, I took under every disadvantage. But I took it: -- and in an hour, oh! Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished, was now a trifle in my eyes: -- this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me -- in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea - a [pharmakon nepenthez] for all human woes: here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket: portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint bottle: and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail coach" (Confessions of an English Opium-Eater).

At an unknown date post-1804, the year that he first tried opium at age nineteen, Thomas De Quincey, famed author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (anonymously published in London magazine in 1821 and in book form in 1822), was working on a draft of an as yet unidentified or unpublished essay.

In 250 words over eighteen lines with numerous cancellations and insertions, De Quincey, apparently after chug-a-lugging laudanum (tincture of opium), to which he was addicted, took flight and soared to Xanadu as a  phoenix ecstatically lost in the ozone and content to be above it all, a mummified skeleton lying in a blissful state. That one-page, drug-addled manuscript has now come to auction.

It reads, in part:

"In a clock-case housed in a warm chamber of a spacious English mansion (inevitably as being English, so beautifully clean, so admirably preserved, [noise there is none, dust there is none, neither moth nor worm doth corrupt] how sweet it is to lie! – If thieves break through and steal, they will not steal a mummy; or not, unless they mistake the mummy for an eight-day clock. And if fire should arise, or even if it should descend from heaven is there not a Phoenix Office, able to look either sort of fire (earthly or heavenly) in the face ... Mummy or anti-Mummy, Skeleton or Anti-Skeleton, the Phoenix soars higher above both, and flaps her victorious wings in utter defiance of all that the element of fire can accomplish—making it her boast to ride in the upper air high above all malice from earthly enemies...."

To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway, Write high, edit sober. It appears, however, that De Quincey, never completely free of opium's grip, remained stoned through the editorial process. This is is an opium-soaked apparition, a fantastic proto-Surrealist Gothic phantasmagory. It must have seemed to De Quincey that he had broken the boundaries of prose and ascended to that enchanted place where reveries take flight onto paper without volition or physical exertion, highly automatic writing while under the spell of the Oneiroi, the dream-spirits who emerge like bats from their deep cavern in Erebos, the land of eternal darkness beyond the rising sun, the infinite night that day cannot break. Don't mess with the Muse, feed Her. Judging by his penmanship there was laudanum in his inkwell.

This De Quincey manuscript, an early example of high-lit. during the Romantic period demonstrating the effect of opium on literary creation, is being offered at Bonham's Fine Books & Manuscripts sale, February 17, 2013, in San Francisco where it is estimated to sell for $800-$1200.

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Manuscript image courtesy of Bonham's, with our thanks.
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Another Fine Mess (Considering Its Age): Wacky Rare Book Condition Reports

by Stephen J. Gertz

In the world of rare bookselling, nothing says amateur like a condition report that leaves your head spinning as Linda Blair's in The Exorcist.

Horror stories are routinely spinned into prospective date reports from high school: "doesn't look like much but, wow, what a personality!" Or, as a status update from Kabul or Karachi: "going to hell,  and with warm breezes, tropical temperatures, and sultry nights, the perfect winter vacation spot."

Somehow, the age of a book has become, to many, alas, a mitigating factor in its condition. People new to the passion and naive must be careful. Caveat Neonate Collector: if you read a condition report that contains the phrase, "fine for its age," or "fine, considering its age," run. A rare  book is in either fine condition or not; age has nothing to do with it, though other factors may.

Actual condition reports harvested from the Net:

"All I can say is WOW! This book is in awesome condition. I was half tempted to rate it Very Fine considering its age [1954]. This is the only copy I ever saw of this. When I had a chance to make it part of my collection I jumped on it. [Note to collectors: don't jump on your books]. The book is completely flat [from jumping on it] and has good vertical alignment. It has minimal tangential stress lines near the spine. There are no tears or missing pieces. The only notable flaws on the cover is a bearly noticeable-diagonal pressure line across the "o" and through the "y", and a similar vertical through the "c".  The book looks close to newstand [sic], considering newstand at the time. It looks awesome on the display shelf. It does not appear to be a crease line and it is more like a hairline fissure. T is a minor pressure artifice near the upper right corner which does not break the color. The colors inside are spectacular and the pages are white! The inside of the front cover has some oil transfer from the ink on the adjacent page, which is generally unavoidable over time. The rear cover is white and in substantially the same condition as the front. Don't miss out on this."

Now, once you wade through all the gobbledygook the copy actually sounds like it is, indeed, in fine condition, but the report written by a building-code inspector - "tangential stress lines," "minor pressure artifice," "good vertical alignment," "diagonal pressure line" - and part-time paperboy: "The book looks close to newstand [sic], considering newstand at the time". After considering newsstand at the time I still have no idea what this person means. The book looks like a newsstand? What is meant, I presume, is that the book, a paperback, looks as fresh as when originally displayed at a newsstand in the 1950s. But you'd never know it from this condition report.

Excuses, Excuses:

"It has some very rough edges and the cover has come away from the book, but this is a very vintage childrens book and looks fine considering its age." [Father Tuck's Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, c. 1900].

Good Job Thought:

"New and used Antique Book The History Of Canada - W.h.p.clement 1897 up for sale. Although listing them seems like there are many [issues], it looks fine, considering its age and use over the past 114 years. The top and bottom edges of the spine are worn and there are 2 small holes in the cover on the spine. The corners of the cover are turned down and worn and there are marks on the cover. A previous owner's name (actually mine) has been written on the inside of the cover and blacked out with ink. The fly leaf is missing. On page 184 someone (probably me as a child) colored the beaver with pencils. Did a good job thought!" [sic].

Bound to Displease:

"This is a vintage hard cover book. Book has some wear to it. Pages are starting to come away from cover but are still bound. some dirt on inner cover pages. Book looks fine for its age." [Poems of Wordsworth, 1888].

Minutely Separated From Reality:

"I would consider it near fine for its age but it looks as if someone tried to remove a name written in red ink and left a stain on the upper part of the inside facing page and the inside cover has minutely separated from the next page." [Untold History Stories, 1927].

Finally, two apocryphal examples from the early nineteenth century, rare book catalog descriptions  written, apparently, under the influence of a certain British poet.

 
That though its radiance which was once
so bright be now forever taken from your sight;
though nothing can bring back its hour
of splendor on the shelf, glory in its flower;
we will grieve not, rather gain strength in what remains behind:
a woe, but wow, what a copy, what a find.


This Copy, while I was yet a Bookseller Careless
of books with one foot in the grave,
thus living on through such a length of years
...distressful tidings...
A sole resource to sell at once portion of  patrimonial fields:
these are things of which I need not speak but must
before this volume crumbles into dust.
And so, a book, once strong and hale,
appears now moldered, as buried in a morbid dale.
Yet death cannot despoil its enchanting charm,
a glorious mess that bought the farm,
another victim of cruel book attrition,

on its tombstone gamely states this first edition:

I'm fine, considering my rotten condition.

That final sentiment, while completely inappropriate as a report on a rare book's fitness, is, however, an entirely appropriate epitaph for a rare book dealer or collector.
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If you would like to know more about how to write effective catalog descriptions that sell books please read Always Lead With Bestiality.
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Yale Exhibit Romances The Last Of The Gentleman Scholars

Pierre-Joseph Redoute, Plum Branches Intertwined, 1802-04, watercolor on vellum.

(Images Courtesy Of Yale Center For British Arts.)

When Charles Ryskamp was interviewed in 2004, he found the reporter's questions about his background so tedious he snapped: "I don't want this to be an obituary." Ryskamp needn't have worried. The one-time director of both the Morgan Library and Museum and the Frick Collection died on March 26, 2010, with the best possible remembrance of his life and career on display at the Yale Center For British Art. Varieties of Romantic Experience: Drawings from the Collection of Charles Ryskamp, an exhibit of 200 works from his private collection, opened six weeks before his death at age 81, and will run through April 25, 2010.

George Stubbs, A Sleeping Cheetah ("A Tyger"), 1788, mezzotint on wove paper.

Charles Ryskamp might well be the last of a dying breed: the gentleman scholar. At age 7, he began to organize, catalog, and label the books in his home library. By age 13 he was buying original art, and galleries and auction houses put him on their mailing lists. Collecting art was a lifelong passion, one he ceaselessly pursued for nearly 70 years. He obtained a first-rate education in English literature, earning a bachelor's degree from Calvin College, a master's degree and doctorate from Yale, and later, adding post-graduate work at Cambridge. (He became a full professor of English at Princeton in 1969, specializing in the work of English poet William Cowper.) But in art history he was entirely self-taught. With a good eye, a sharp mind, and a devoted heart, he created one of the finest privately held collections of drawings in the world.

Josephus Augustus Knip, River Landscape With Distant Cliffs, 1809, water color over graphite on wove paper with double framing lines in gray ink.

In the art world, Ryskamp's area of collecting was primarily English and European prints and drawings of the Romantic Era, or roughly 1789 to 1850. He gravitated towards well-established artists, such as Goya, Turner, Blake, and Durer, saying: ''If you look at the greatest masters, I think you just have a sense of quality, that's hard to analyze.'' His collecting was also governed by pragmatism. He concentrated on prints until the late 1950's, but when they became unaffordable, he moved on to lower-priced drawings. Later, as director of the Morgan and the Frick, he shifted his sights to acquisitions that would not compete with the works of either museum.

William John Thomas Collins, Cypresses At The Villa d'Este, Tivoli, 1838, pen and ink and watercolor over graphite on wove paper.

These limits placed on the collection were, ironically, what made it so important. His commitment to search out works not typically found in museums led Ryskamp to assemble over time one of the world's best collections of drawings from the Danish Golden Age. Rather than focusing on more expensive paintings, his emphasis on drawings allowed him to purchase works that were often overlooked by wealthier collectors and institutions. Ryskamp summed up his prized artworks this way: ''As I looked at what I had accumulated, these hundreds and hundreds of drawings, I realized that I had equally good collections for France, Germany, Holland, Denmark. And that was almost unheard of. I can't think of any museum which would have all well represented.''

Adolph Menzel, Carl Johan Arnold, ca.1848, graphite on wove paper.

Ryskamp hand-picked the 200 drawings in the Yale show, along with co-curator Matthew Hargraves. They represent about one-third of his total collection of works on paper. The show was the realization of a cherished dream: "I have never before known an exhibition to show Romantic drawings of all of these countries together. I have long hoped for such an exhibition, and it is a rare privilege to have this wish fulfilled." The breadth of subject matter on display is as amazing as the array of artists. The works are grouped by content, with sections covering land and sea, the natural world, religion, the human figure, and the imagination. Within each area are drawings by such heavy-hitters as Conelius Varley, Henry Fuseli, Caspar David Friedrich, Camille Corot, Eugene Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Johan Thomas Lundbye, and C.W. Eckersberg.

J.M.W. Turner, Shields Lighthouse, 1820-1830, (trial proof A), mezzotint on laid paper.

In an essay accompanying the show, Ryskamp emphasized his enduring dedication to the arts: "As much as possible I have devoted my life to the appreciation, study and teaching of art and literature." When asked for advice by a beginning art collector he said: ''I think you should go and look. And don't have a goal in mind.'' A life spent seeking out great art wherever he could find it enabled Charles Ryskamp to assemble a group of artworks that will inspire collectors for generations to come. And he added one last brush stroke without which the portrait of an art collector is incomplete: "I collect in order to give to others. I plan to share what I have collected as long as I live and, if possible, bequeath what is left of my collections to public institutions." The greater part of Charles Ryskamp's art collection has been donated to the Morgan Library.

Posted by Nancy Mattoon