WITH BAWDY AND EROTIC ENTRIES

HEYLWAGEN, CORNELIUS. ALBUM AMICORUM. STAM[M] BUCH worinnen Die Edle Nahmen und Das angenehme Zudencken Seiner Hoch und Werthgeschätzten Gönner und Freunde Mit aller Hochachtung und Ergebenheit verehret Cornelius Heylwagen Joh: Georg: Pol: Saxo. , Freyberg, , Suhl, and a few places further away, Johanngeorgenstadt u.a., 1727- 1758 £12500

Oblong 8vo album (215 x 115 mm) of 93 leaves containing 67 entries, including 14 full-page size or near full-page colourful gouaches, one extremely delicate collage of textile material, a painting and cut-out paper, one leaf of calligraphy, all these on vellum, 7 ink and pen drawings, most of which with additional watercolour or wash (3 on vellum), one leaf with mounted copper engraving, 79 blanks; contemporary calf decorated in gilt and spine with raised bands, patterned endpapers of golden stars and dots over purple tinted paper; binding a bit rubbed, internally occasional spotting or browning (the usual traces of the volume’s original use); however, in rather good condition and completely unrestored or tampered with in any way.

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A fascinating illustrated album, with entries from university friends with unusually frank and erotic illustrations and inscriptions. The entries are mostly from Johanngeorgenstadt, Heylwagen's home town, but also Freiberg, Leipzig, Oberwiesenthal, Suhl, and further afield Basel, Regensburg, Schaffhausen and Vienna.

The tradition of the album amicorum or friendship book goes back to German students of the middle of the 16th century. It is a bound collection of moral, humorous, artistic and literary contributions by friends to one particular person, the owner of the album, and presents valuable source material on the domestic life, thought, values and aspirations of the emerging bourgeoisie. In social outlook the ‘friendship books’ are bourgeois, stressing the private and domestic sphere with the occasional reference to accepted beliefs and ideology, such as a gouache on f. [29] with a domestic scene of a beautiful maid and a Jew, reflecting all the typical stereotypes, as well as a fine gouaches touching the erotic sphere.

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This album opens with a mounted engraving with an anacreontic scene with additional ornamental framework in pen and wash, followed by a vellum leaf containing a calligraphic four-line poem about domestic bliss and on the verso the colourful design of a parody of a coat-of-arms; a crest surmounted by a dog with a bone between its teeth, the main shield displaying two dogs wrangling over a bone. Facing this is the title within a gouache cartouche, incorporating a putto’s head. Among the contributors are the Regensburg writer, humanist and director of the Gymnasium, Christoph Zippel, teachers, professors and patrons Heylwagen encountered during his travels and studies in Southern , Austria and probably Hungary.

One contribution is in Hungarian and written on a vellum leaf, which was passed on via Regensburg to , another fine watercolour is the emblematic depiction of the globe sitting on a patch of lawn, a snail attached to the globe, which contains recent geographical discoveries and conjectures, such as Novaia Zemlia and the Australian coastline. The next leaf, vellum, is a highly professional, however, unfinished portrait of Heylwagen in pencil, ink and orange bistre, signed by Behling. Other illustrated leaves represent the panoply of suitable iconography for a

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‘friendship book’; a drawing emphasizing central perspective of the cross lying on a table with three-dimensional letters of the word ‘Jesus’ resting on it, a heart-shaped calligraphic poem, a chamber with a table laid with a deck of playing cards, a clay pipe and a carafe of wine and a glass, or a group of drinkers of both genders leaving a tavern at night. Clearly Heylwagen was a student who travelled, made friends (who contributed to this album and occasionally employed professional scribes and miniaturists) in Regensburg, Vienna, Strasbourg and smaller places in-between. Johanngeorgenstadt itself was a small mining town high in the mountains near the border between Saxony and Bohemia.

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