The funeral procession of Charles V.

29 etchings, 24 x 34,5 cm (platemarks largest), 29,6 x 18,7 cm (platemarks pl. 1), laid paper with several watermarks (Heawood 535, 536, Churchill 289), signed in the 2nd plate "Ioannes a Duetecum Lucas Duetecum Fecit" (some repaire tears, sm. stains, overall in good condition, with wide margins).

All under passe-partout.

When Charles V died in 1558, he received a modest funeral at the monastery of Yuste, where he had spent the last three years of his life after his abdication in 1555. Notwithstanding, his son and heir, Philip II, decided to hold a sumptuous funeral procession in Brussels. In order to keep a record of the state ceremony, it was immortalised in an ambitious print series etched by Lucas and Johannes Van Doetecum, and first published by Hieronymus Cock and Christofel Plantin in that same year. It is also one of the few works signed on the 2nd plate by the Van Doetecum brothers. The original plates were bought by the Dutch printmaker and published Hendrick Hondius, who republished them in 1619. This edition of the 3rd state (of 3) did not include the title page and introductory text, present in the original Plantin edition. The set of the present lot includes the famous large triumphal ship Victoria, representing the virtues and military victories of the deceased Emperor, and also the final plate with the arms of the state and regalia of Charles V. Plates 6, 15, 20, 31 and 33 are missing.
Ref. New Hollstein (Van Doetecum), 84-117. - Riggs 63-96. - N. Orenstein, "Hendrick Hondius and the Business of Prints in Seventeenth-Century Holland", pp. 196-97, no. 372. - L. De Pauw-De Veen, "De staten van de Pompa Funebris van Karel V door Johannes en Lucas A Deutecum naar Hieronymus Cock", in Miscelanea Jozef Duverger, Ghent 1968, pp. 449-63.