Gaspare Ruina

An architect and wood engraver, Gaspare Ruina served in Ferrara under Alfonso I as head of fortifications and of the Pietre Dure factory and from 1533 was in service to the Republic of Venice. While in Ferrara he built the Palazzo Postaccia. Among the few woodcuts he made to have survived is the large-sized Creation of Adam after Michelangelo. The present depiction of a rowing boat at sea belongs to what is probably a nine-part series of woodcuts that de Witt described in 1934 and which, in view of the signature on one of the woodblocks, he assigned to Ruina’s oeuvre.

In front of a rock ledge, next to which a ship with reefed sails lies at anchor, two powerful rowers drive the little boat through a rough sea. A pair of lovers sit gazing at each other in the middle of the boat, while two other passengers can be discerned in the bow. Seen in the context of other depictions from the series, of which there are impressions in the British Museum and other collections, de Witt’s assumption that they are literature illustrations for a story in the manner of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso seems convincing. The refined technique Ruina employs both for the faces and the details in the depiction of the boats and the sea documents his experience as a wood carver.

All of Ruina’s woodcuts are rare; only one other impression of our sheet is known to exist, in the British Museum (inv. no. 1860,0414.166). This, however, is a much later impression from a worn woodblock printing widely with a major defect in the lower left of the scene. The sheet is on offer here in a fine early impression with delicately printed detail, slightly uneven in places, but with a striking printed relief verso. With a framing line that is partly trimmed. Minor ageing, otherwise in very good condition.

EUR 15,000