Heloise Weeping with a Letter, Stipple Engraving by Bollinger, circa 1820
€ 240
Original antique · The actual sheet photographed · Certificate of authenticity on request · Sold unframed · Worldwide shipping from € 15 (rates)
Date
circa 1820
Mapmaker / artist
Bollinger (engraver), lettered "Bollinger sc."
Publisher
Gebr. Schumann, Zwickau
Technique
Stipple engraving
Coloring
Uncolored
Sheet size
26 × 21 cm (10.2 × 8.3 in)
Condition
Good
Reference
BG-14343-73
What the condition grades mean
Excellent
Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
Very good
Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
Good
Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
Fair
Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.
Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.
Condition
Good condition for its age. Sheet laid on a larger backing; darker toning to the exposed backing; light scattered spotting to the margins. The image is clean. Please review the images for further condition details.
About this sheet
An engraved image lettered "Heloise.", showing Héloïse, the learned lover of Peter Abelard, as a young woman overcome by grief. She looks upward with tear filled eyes, her long hair falling loose over her shoulders beneath a dark veil, and she presses a folded letter to her breast with both hands, her drapery slipping from one shoulder. The image is set in an octagonal frame against a finely stippled ground. Below it at right is the engraver's credit "Bollinger sc." and at the foot of the plate the imprint "Zwickau, bei Gebr. Schumann." (Zwickau, published by the Schumann brothers).
Friedrich Wilhelm Bollinger was a Berlin engraver known for small portraits and book illustrations in a delicate combination of stipple and line. The Schumann brothers of Zwickau in Saxony were publishers and booksellers who issued pocket editions of the classics and a long series of engraved portraits, the Bildnisse der berühmtesten Menschen aller Völker und Zeiten, to which Bollinger contributed plates. August Schumann, the elder of the brothers, was the father of the composer Robert Schumann.
The story of Héloïse and Abelard, the twelfth century philosopher and his brilliant pupil, their secret marriage, his mutilation at the hands of her uncle and their later lives as abbess and monk, was known throughout Europe through their Latin letters. Alexander Pope's poem Eloisa to Abelard of 1717 and Rousseau's novel Julie, or the New Heloise of 1761 made her a heroine of feeling, and in the Romantic age she was pictured exactly as here, clutching a letter from her absent lover.
The engraving is delicate and well printed, with the tears, the parted lips and the light on the bare shoulder carefully rendered. The sheet is laid down on a larger backing paper.
A touching small image for lovers of literature, of the Middle Ages or of Romantic sentiment.
This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.
