Capitain Mazin
22 by 18 inches
DNH15 $345
These beautiful, extravagantly engraved prints capture one of the most romantic & difficult times in European history, when the horse was still king & ts training of supreme importance in battle.
William Cavendish the Duke of Newcastle was a Royalist or Cavalier, with the long flowing locks and sumptuous clothes typical of his class. It was the time of the English Civil War, with Olive Cromwell & his party of Roundheads gaining ascendancy over the Royalists. The roundheads, a term of derision, were so called because of their short hair as “they had the hair of their heads very few of them longer than their ears.” The war was both a religious & class war, with the Royalists mostly aristocratic Episcopalians or Catholics asserting the “Divine Right of Kings” & the Roundheads Puritans from the merchant & working class, believing in democracy and religious reform.
Having fought for King Charles I, who was executed, Cavendish was exiled to France during Cromwell’s reign. There he pursued, in the manner befitting a nobleman, the training of his eight Barbary horses for “the service of the Field in Time of War, or for the Exercise & Improvement of Gentlemen in the Academy at home.”
He published his theories in this area first in Antwerp in 1657 & then again in England in 1743, after the death of Cromwell & the restoration of the monarchy. Many of the scenes show him at the great estates of Belsover Castle & Welbeck Abbey, which still exist today & are open to the public.
These large copper engravings are beautifully executed by Abraham Van Diepenbeke. Each print is a double folio, measuring approximately 22 inches wide by 18 inches tall on chain lined paper with an occasional fleur de lys watermark. There is a central fold & some with additional soft folds which will mat out. The condition is excellent for their age of some 280 years.
