The Master of the Fertility of the Egg

Opera Nova Curiosa,  1695

A Concert Of Animals, Birds and Stylised Figures, Late 17th - Early 18th Century

Grotesque Scene With Animals, Late 17th- early 18th Century


"Maestro della Fertilità dell'Uovo or Master of the Fertility of the Egg is the name given to a yet to be identified painter active in the second half of the 17th and early 18th century in Brescia. The name is based on a work entitled La fertilità dell' Uovo (The Fertility of the Egg), which depicts dwarfs, geese and lobsters hatching eggs and is in the collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum.

The art historian Mariolina Olivera was the first to isolate a group of works by this master in her 1990 monograph Faustino Bocchi e l'arte di figurar pigmei. She placed the master in the circle of Faustino Bocchi, an artist active in Brescia around the same time and known for his genre paintings with dwarfs. The master’s oeuvre distinguishes itself from Bocchi’s more dreamlike work through its biting, satirical edge.

The identity of the Master of the Fertility of the Egg has yet to be determined. Some art historians have suggested he was Bernardino Dehò (1675-1717) from Cremona while others have pointed at Angelo Esseradts, known as ‘il Fiammingo’ (the Fleming), whose name was also Italianised as Everardi. Everardi was Bocchi’s teacher and introduced the bizarre and grotesque elements of Flemish art to Brescia.

The works of this master typically depict grotesque figures (usually dwarfs) and animals engaging in various human activities. The works generally ignore space and are characterized by strong foreshortening. The figures are often portrayed in profile and stand out against the dark, mostly flat backgrounds. This gives them the impression of being cut out.  The persons and animals in the compositions engage in disorganised actions and reactions. The compositions are full of absurd and grotesque elements and it is often difficult to make out what exactly is going on^. The master’s raucous style appears to constitute some form of 'moral zoology'. The absurd characters are possibly intended to show the madness of the human condition, and the vanity and ridiculousness of life." - quote source



Artworks found at Sotheby's 

The Torments of Hell (The Last Judgement) 1560-1600

Cornelis Bos - Allegorical Depiction of Hell, 16th Century

"Cornelis [Willem] Bos (c. 1506/10 — before 7 May 1555) was a Flemish engraver, printseller and book publisher, through whose images after paintings and reproducing ancient Roman sculptures, like the Laocoön, classic works were put in the visual repertory of Northern European artists. His work is often signed with the monogram C-B.

Cornelis was born at 's Hertogenbosch, whence his surname Bos is derived, but on 1 April 1541 he was enregistered as a citizen of Antwerp, where he was therefore already established as a member of the imagemakers' Guild of Saint Luke. His earliest identified engravings (1537) reproduce Maarten van Heemskerck's Prudence and Justice (1537). and a work by Agostino Veneziano. His re-engraving of work by Marcantonio Raimondi does not necessarily indicate that he ever made a trip to Rome. Until 1544 Bos worked in Antwerp as an engraver, commissioned by publishers in the city's extensive book trade for illustrations in books. His engravings, copied from the published engravings in Italian editions, served as illustrations for a brief summary in Dutch of the treaty on architecture by Vitruvius and for a Dutch translation of Book IV of Sebastiano Serlio's architectural treatise, both published by Pieter Coecke van Aelst. Bos' engravings illustrate a text on anatomy that he produced in 1542 by the printer and publisher Antoine de Goys.

In the summer of 1544 Bos was forced to flee Antwerp for his participation in an antisacerdotalist free-thinking spiritualist sect and was declared exiled by the Council of Brabant in his absence. It appears that he went to Paris, where an anatomical work published by Jérôme de Gourmont in 1545 repeats text used by Cornelis Bos and even makes use of the woodblocks formerly in his possession. A decorative patternbook also published by Jérôme de Gourmont, Livre de moresques was a pirated edition of a work published in Antwerp by Bos, c published at Paris, 1546; it served designers of mannerist scrollwork (bandelwerk) in the Low Countries. Between 1546 and 1548, from his secure refuge in Nuremberg,  Cornelis Bos would publish more than a hundred engraved designs of strapwork and grotesques. Bos also produced popular engravings of religious and allegorical subjects, often dependent for their composition upon the Kleinmeister of Nuremberg, with many parallels in the output of Virgil Solis." - quote source

Ten Studies Of Grotesque Heads, 17th Century