MONOGRAMMIST HG "Pio Ac Catholico Lectori". Catholic broadsheet...

MONOGRAMMIST HG "Pio Ac Catholico Lectori". Catholic broadsheet against Henry VIII. [Paris] 1549 Engraving, 27,2 x 39,2 cm (plate without text), 44,3 x 39,2 (full sheet), laid paper with Parisian watermark of 1530 (Briquet 12828), signed and dated in upper right corner "HG 1549" (some brown stains in 5th image, large horizontal tear running along the upper images, some loss of paper in folding lines). Mounted on Japan paper. A large engraved broadsheet on the martyrdom of eighteen English Carthusian monks who were executed in 1535, by order of Henry VIII. They were tortured for 14 days. The sheet shows six engraved compartments in diachronic order ranging from the arrest of the monks by soldiers to the torture, hanging, removal and burning of bowels, and finally cutting into pieces of the mutilated bodies. In the lower half, on a separate sheet, letterpress in Latin recounts the facts and asks the Catholic reader to pray for the souls of the martyrs. The broadsheet was intended as Catholic propaganda to incriminate the monstrosities performed by the English Protestants and Henry VIII. A number of English Catholic reactions were published on the continent from 1550 onward, starting with Maurice Chancy's "Historia aliquot nostri saeculi martyrum" (Mainz 1550). Due to their temporary nature newsprints such as these have become extremely rare. No other copy of this edition has been recorded. A later edition of the broadsheet, dated 1555, with engravings attributed to the French Fontainebleau engraver Beatrizet and printed in Rome is now in the collection of the British Museum (Inv. 1854,1113.151). A photograph of our print is now in the same collection (inv. 1976,0131.8). Ref. Bartsch XV.256.34. - A. Dillon, "Michelangelo and the English Martyrs", Aldershot 2012, pp. 87-89. - Allison/rogers pp. 235-241. - Not in USTC. Prov. Munich Collection.