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Prints and drawings between originality, authenticity and authority. Examples from the Valvasor Collection in Zagreb, Croatia

Processing drawings and prints from a historical collection such as Valvasor's is a very complex and demanding task. Some aspects of that complexity are analysed in this paper. The cataloguing of the material, carried out during the preparation of the facsimile edition of the entire collection, which was published between 2005 and 2008 under the title Iconotheca Valvasoriana (project leader and editor: Lojze Gostiša), showed, among other things, that the primary difficulty was associated with the determination of the authorship. However, the questions of authorship also involve the questions of authenticity or originality. Furthermore, the attribution of drawings bound in Volume XVII is a much more delicate task than the attribution of prints. The drawings are unique works of art, most often without the signature of the author. However, the uniqueness of a drawing does not rule out the possibility of it being a copy based on a template of any kind – meaning that its originality might be very limited. Indeed, many of the drawings contained in Volume XVII were made in Valvasor's workshop as exercises by anonymous and not always overly skilled artists, who copied models from the existing prints. In spite of their low artistic value, those drawings held a certain importance for Valvasor, who included them, along with many other prints similar in character, into Volume XVII. Other volumes of Valvasor collection also contain a series of less important engravings and woodcut prints, and sometimes even clippings from illustrated books. Yet, owing to this "mishmashing" of topics and the collector's tolerance of aesthetically less valuable prints, the Valvasor Collection enables a unique insight into all forms and types of the printmaking production of the 17th century. Moreover, the inclusion of the drawings and engravings made by his associates in Bogenšperk also reflects his own situation as a local cultural entrepreneur in Carniola at the end of the 17th century. In this context, the paper also presents some other characteristic types of the relationship between the drawings and prints in terms of their originality and authenticity, particularly in relation to engravings of city views in Valvasor's main work Die Ehre des Herzogthums Krain (1689). It seems that Valvasor, as the main authority, sponsor and leader of the project for the creation of those city views, has deliberately suppressed on them the information about the authorship of his artist-associate Justus van Nypoort.

Johann Weichard Valvasor, Justus van Nypoort, prints, drawings

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