[Drake, Francis]:

$120,000 · Offered by William Reese Company

FRANCISCUS DRAECK NOBILISSIMUS EQUES ANGLIAE IS EST QUI TOTO T TERRARUM ORBE CIRCUMDUCTO.... A very rare portrait of Sir Francis Drake on a German broadside, celebrating his circumnavigation of the world and thus most likely published after 1580. It is one of the very few lifetime portraits of Drake and is a marvelous representation. Drake is shown full-length, in armor, holding a firearm, standing at a port, also illustrating three men loading a ship, with two columns of German poetry in the center. Another copy of this broadside is in the John Carter Brown Library, a gift of Henry C. Taylor in 1944. The two columns of German poetry in the center refer to Drake's recent return from his voyage and invoke the image in the broadside of him loading his ship with powder to fight the enemies of Christendom. It then warns soldiers not to act as mercenaries for non-Christians. As Drake never fought the Turks nor any non-Christian government, it seems likely that the author of this broadside sought to exploit Drake's fame as a privateer and successful military leader for Queen Elizabeth, as a model for Germans to serve Christendom in the war against the Turks.Andresen ascribes the etching to Balthasar Jenichen (fl. 1563-92, died before 1621), a prolific artist of Nuremberg. Drugulin describes a copy with that artist's name inscribed in the plate, "B. Jenichen fec."; and a copy of the unsigned state appeared in Ludwig Rosenthal catalogue 85 in 1892 as item 427, from which it was sold

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