22 (of a possible 25?) unsigned copper engravings on mid 16th century French paper watermarked varyingly with small circle (see Briquet 2927) and quatrefoil; 2 prints loose, the final one mounted on a blank leaf. All with exceptional contemporary hand-coloring, ruled and highlighted in gold. Some wear to edges and light staining to margins, a few juvenile marginal pen trials, some old repairs to blank verso of penultimate leaf, some loss to blank lower margin of final mounted engraving). 16th or 17th century limp vellum, sewn on 3 tawed thongs laced in, one absent; faint ink notes in French in an 18th century hand to covers, some staining, first front endpaper inscribed in a juvenile hand 'ce beau cayer de peinture apparttient a pierre dangeny etudiant en rhetorique sous la discipline de mr picard lan de grace 1776', second front endpaper inscribed with the names 'Monsieur D'abernat', 'Busquelles', 'Busqueilhe', and 'De Cyrot').

These engravings have puzzled art historians since at least the 19th century, when a series of misbegotten attributions were advanced and endured for more than a century. More clarity has been brought to them in the last twenty years, but the present set, with watermarks intact and noteworthy coloring, finally helps elucidate their true nature.
These engravings were likely printed at Fontainebleau, France, in the early 1540s, and by Du Cerceau. They are closely associated with the drawings of Mattijs Cock (c. 1505 – 1548), older brother of Hieronymous, and with those of the Master(s) of the Errera Sketchbook. They represent a very early and significant stage in the development of pure landscape in print. The series played an important role in the transmission of ideas about landscape composition from Flanders to France in the first half of the 16th century. The series is probably best conceived of as a modelbook of images widely in circulation in Flemish landscape art in the 1530s and '40s and reproduced as etchings to assist the artists at Fontainebleau in their own compositions.

We are indebted to Catherine Jenkins and her 2006 Print Quarterly article, "Landscape in the Fontainebleau School," for its in-depth study of this series and related works. Jenkins's introduction provides a succinct summary of the Fontainebleau School of printmaking:The Fontainebleau School of printmaking had a relatively short lifespan, beginning around 1542 and coming to an abrupt end in 1547. Already by the early 1540s the château of Fontainebleau was a flourishing international artistic centre. Artists from Italy, France and Flanders were employed to transform François I's residence into one of the most spectacular palaces in Europe. In 1540, on the death of Rosso Fiorentino, the Bolognese painter Francesco Primaticcio had taken over as artistic director at Fontainebleau, and it was probably at his instigation that a printmaking workshop was set up. Over 400 prints survive today, the majority of which were executed by four printmakers, Antonio Fantuzzi, Léon Davent, Jean Mignon and the Master I♀V. Just under a quarter of the works remain anonymous, although a significant proportion can be grouped together according to various recognizable hands. The subjects depicted by the Fontainebleau printmakers vary from Primaticcio and Rosso's designs for the château, to the compositions of Giulio Romano, Luca Penni, Parmigianino and Michelangelo. A further important subject was the landscape, appearing in as many as a third of the etchings produced by the School.

This series appears first in the literature in Heinrich von Geymüller's 1887 treatment of the works of Jacques I Androuet du Cerceau (1510-1584). Geymüller describes an album containing 25 engravings of landscapes, attributing their authorship to du Cerceau's workshop because of what he saw as their crude quality. The relationship between Geymüller's album and the present is confirmed by his figure 72, which matches our "Image #19".
In 1932, André Linzeler, in Inventaire du Fonds Français: le Seizième Siècle, I, page 56, recorded an album at the BnF with 24 engravings.

Jenkins (2006, pages 117 and 120), casts doubt on the attribution to du Cerceau but also stops short of attributing the prints to Fontainebleau, saying: The etchings portray the same types of Flemish views found in the centre of the ornamental frames by Fantuzzi and the Master I♀V, and indeed five of the images show the exact same landscapes as depicted in five Fontainebleau School prints. Several landscapes in this series reproduce entire views or fragments of views found in existing Netherlandish drawings and paintings, including Bay with a Central Tree depicted in the Flemish School drawing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 39) [our Image #21]. Two other landscapes from the series reproduce part of the background of Herri met de Bles's Sermon of St John in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and his Journey to Emmaus in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A further print depicts a Flight into Egypt usually attributed to Jan van Amstel, only copies of which survive.A comparison of the prints from the small landscape series with their Fontainebleau School counterparts highlights the compositional similarities between the two. In two instances, we can compare three versions of the same subject. Bay with a Central Tree is reproduced in the Met drawing (fig. 35), in the small landscape series (fig. 39) [Image #21] and in an etching by the Master I♀V (B. XVI. 431.136; fig. 36). The former two compositions are particularly close. It is important to note, however, that both the small landscape and the version by the Master I♀V have a few small details in common, elements that are not present in the original drawing. These include part of a fence (which resembles a ladder) just to the left of the small tree in the middle ground, and a sail has been added to the second boat to the left of the central tree details not depicted in the Met drawing. This suggests that the Master I♀V used a model that was closer to the small landscape print than to the original Flemish drawing. The possibility that the small landscape series itself was present in the Fontainebleau School workshop cannot be discounted, although it is not possible to know for sure. [Emphasis added.]

Watermarks:
Jenkins, on page 117, notes of the series, “All sets appear to be printed on French paper, although unfortunately it has not been possible to detect any watermarks.” Thankfully, the present album preserves several examples of a small circle watermark and one of a quatrefoil. The small circle is the watermark identified by Jenkins as characteristic of works made at Fontainebleau (“The small circle, around 7 mm in diameter, is the most common Fontainebleau School watermark, visible on about 40 percent of the prints I have examined.”) Briquet 2927 associates this watermark with papers made at Troyes from the 1520s to the late 1530s. Thus, we can say that this series of engravings was almost certainly present at Fontainebleau and very probably made there.

Fountainbleau School Landscapes and Use of These Prints:
Jenkins lays out a scenario that illuminates the primacy of the present set in the oeuvre of Fontainebleau landscape prints. This case study relates to the print illustrated as our Image #14:Three versions of River View with a Pointed Rock Surmounted by a Cross may also be compared: this scene, represented in the small etching series (fig. 40), is depicted in two Fontainebleau School prints, one by the Master I♀V (B. XVI.372.5; fig. 41) and the other by an anonymous hand (fig. 42). In these last two works the distance between the two rocky promontories is reduced so that the composition can fit into a square format. Looking carefully at the details of the compositions reveals that, whereas the anonymous Fontainebleau School print remains close to the landscape from the small series, the Master I♀V made a number of small changes (as he did in the previous example), adding movement and vitality to the rock formations, altering the position of the foreground boat and inserting a lonely figure at the extreme right of image. This last version by the Master I♀V is closer to the anonymous Fontainebleau School print, whereas the latter anonymous work has elements in common with the landscape from the small series, not depicted in the version by the Master I♀V. These include such details as the tufts of grass sprouting from the top of the rock, the fence at the foot of the cross, and the position of the boat in the foreground. We can therefore tentatively reconstruct a working scenario whereby the anonymous Fontainebleau artist used the landscape from the small series as a model, and in turn the Master I♀V based his composition on the one executed at Fontainebleau (or at least a similar version).In some cases the compositional details of the small landscape series and their Fontainebleau School counterparts match very closely, but in others they are more loosely interpreted. There are also variations in scale and format between the two versions, especially where the square shape of the Fontainebleau School plates meant omitting elements from the rectangular landscape series. If the latter works were the sources used, then they were not traced directly onto the printing plates. Rather, an intermediary drawing would have been prepared by the printmaker, with all the final details of the composition fully worked out.A set of prints such as the small landscapes would have acted as a working stock of designs that were used and shared in the workshop. It is clear from the number of repetitions that occur in the Fontainebleau School prints that the sharing of models was common workshop practice. Not only are whole landscapes duplicated, but also smaller fragments and motifs, which are repeated in prints by different artists.
The presence on our Image #10 of an early copyist's grid, formed by red-chalk graticules at the edges, supports the conclusion that this series formed a modelbook for other Fontainebleau artists.

Towards a possible attribution:
Currently, Jenkins point out to Du Cerceau as the most likely creator of this suite. We will stick with this attribution, however out of intellectual curiosity, we had developed an alternative proposal.
Broadly speaking, it could also had been the work of a Flemish, probably Antwerpenaar, artist in the employ of François I at Fontainebleau. The research required to determine who might fit those parameters is outside the scope of this description, however a fascinating of research potential.

A closely associated artist to this suite is probably Matthijs Cock. Cock authored several remarkably similar landscape drawings, though he was partial to narrative and a primary foreground figure, elements lacking here. His brother Heronymous's decision to turn Matthijs's drawings into a set of posthumous etchings (post-dating the present set) is also noteworthy. The existence of a drawing at The Met attributed to the Circle of Matthijs Cock and closely associated with our Image #21 might have helped solidify an attribution to Cock, but, as the Met points out in its curatorial essay, such a conclusion is not forthcoming:The Farmhouse by the Waterside is closely related to an etching from an anonymous series of small landscapes, kept in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, as well as to a print by the Master IQV, a printmaker at the court of Fontainebleau.[1] Both show largely the same scenery as our drawing. In the foreground of the first print, however, a road, vegetation and numerous figures have been added. The landscape in the second print is somewhat cropped, and the boats in the foreground have been slightly relocated. This time, no road or figures were added, but the vegetation flourishes.
Although it is tempting to think that our drawing served as the model for both these prints, this relationship proves problematic. Both printed landscapes show something that looks like a little ladder, standing at the waterfront, left of the central tree. This object is missing in the drawing, and it therefore seems unlikely that the sheet was used by the printmakers as a model. It would suggest that our drawing is a copy after a now lost original.

Other artists belonging to the same lineage as the author of the present works include Joachim Patinir, an earlier predecessor was renowned for his "world landscapes"; Cornelis Massijs, likewise an author of many world landscapes; and Herri met de Bles, whose foregrounds are much more complex and active than what we see in the Small Landscapes.

This impressive landscape, which was attributed to Jan van Amstel by Christie's in 2012, raises tantalizing questions. It features a combination of our Images #19 and #21 with the busy foreground of Herri met de Bles, to whose circle Max Jakob Friedländer had previously attributed it. While a more comprehensive survey of Flemish landscape paintings will not be forthcoming in this description, the existence of this and other closely-related prints, drawings, and oils from this period, in both the Low Countries and France establishes the importance of the images included in the Small Series to the emergence of pure landscape in these areas.

The loose, painterly, and fast penwork present in the enigmatic Errera Sketchbook at the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique invites undeniable parallels with the engraving style seen in the Small Landscapes. Certain subjects and motifs are repeated in both and comprehensive survey and comparison of the two might very well uncover important relationships.
Although previously mentioned in this description, we would reiterate that Albrecht Altedorfer's series of landscape etchings share many commonalities in subject and composition with the present series and these would bear further examination in the literature.

A Note on the Hand-Coloring and Illumination:
The hand-coloring and illumination are exceptional, substantially enlivening what have otherwise been termed "dry" and "crude" images. The coloring demonstrates a transition between earlier styles, such as the red and blue roofs and curled clouds of the Nuremberg Weltchronik-Meister, and the elaborate use of lead-white and gold highlighting seen in the work of Georg Mack the Elder and family from 1556 onward.

It is not necessarily the case that coloring can be said to be from the 1540s, and indeed, a date slightly later in the 16th century might make more sense. Aside from Susan Dackerman's magisterial Painted Prints, we are unaware of any other great surveys of 16th-century print coloring that would make attribution and dating of the color possible.

Conclusion:
The Small Landscape series represents a significant and understudied snapshot of early Flemish landscape composition, and it played a critical role in the genesis of landscape art in France. The close association of the images in this series with other prints, drawings, and paintings from the period underscores their pivotal place in early 16th-century European art history. We hypothesize that a broader survey of both independent landscapes and landscape backgrounds in the paintings of the first half of that century would reveal many compositions and subjects shared with these prints.
Geymüller, Les Du Cerceau: Leur Vie et Leur Oeuvre (Paris and London, 1887), 155 (fig. 72), 301-02.Gudlaugsson, S. J. "Het Errera-schetsboek en Lucas van Valckenborch." Oud Holland 74 (1959): 118-138.Jenkins, Catherine. "Landscape in the Fontainebleau School Print." Print Quarterly 23, no. 2 (June 2006): 111-133.Linzeler, Inventaire du Fonds Français: le Seizième Siècle, I (Paris, 1932), 56.

Provenance: 

Mr. Picard; teacher of rhetoric at the College d'Aurillac in south-central France between 1763 and 1782. Pierre d'Angeny; given to him by the aforementioned in 1776; Bernard Quaritch, Ltd., as "Low Countries, ca.1600".