JF Ptak Science Books    Quick Post

I think that this blog needs a (Jorge Luis) Borgesian category for the easily-to-multi-interpret things that move across the Blog Desk. Such is the case for this pamphlet printed in 1710, An Auction of State Pictures, Containing
a Most Curious Collection of Original Low-Church Faces: Drawn Exactly
to the Life by a High-Church Limner, which carries this beautiful woodcut as the only illustration for its slim twenty pages.

The pamphlet is a wonderful satirical farce, a political diatribe against the enemies of a Dr. Henry Sacheverell who set against the cleric for the sermons he preached against the Whig ministry of the Earl of Sunderland.  Its not necessary to be drawn into the intricacies of early 18th century English religico-polisci–just that the enemies of Sacheverell were dispatched by describing them as portraits being sold at this imaginary sale–unflattering portraits with unflattering descriptions. All anonymous they were, but to anyone having any knowledge of the scene their identities were clear enough. 

I think that the creation of an imaginary auction to tread on the disguised portraits of enemies was a brilliant idea.

Evidently, there is a description of what happens on the sales floor of this “auction”, which appears to one of the earliest descriptions of an art auction scene–and the action of the auctioneer is pretty much that which you can find today.