In this volume the large and diverse œuvre of Andreas Trost, a remarkable Central European printmaker, has been brought together.
Trost is closely connected to the regions of Styria and Carniola. His most important contributions to printmaking are a great number of topographical views of both regions as well as a large map of Styria. He closely collaborated with the nobleman Johann Weikhard von Valvasor, a scholar of renown and an accomplished draughtsman, who delivered the drawings to be put to print by Trost and also published the books that comprised them. For this purpose, Valvasor had a print shop installed in his castle Wagensperg where the engraver lived for a length of time. Valvasor was also a conscientious collector of drawings and prints, some of which have been handed down to posterity and are today kept in the Croatian state archive in Zagreb. The initial destination of the collection was to deliver models for the printmakers working for Valvasor. Trost, for instance, illustrated his patron’s obsessive treatise on the death of man, relying heavily on Hans Holbein’s famous Dance of Death. Where, in the same book, he had to use drawings by Johann Koch the results are much less satisfactory. For the same Valvasor, Trost engraved a fine series illustrating the passion of Christ after drawings by Jan Wierix which were present in Valvasor’s collection and surrounded them with highly decorative borders inspired by prints of Virgil Solis. He also worked after drawings by the geographer Georg Matthäus Vischer, especially for the aforementioned map.
Published in 2021
Compiler: Dieter Beaujean
Editor: Gero Seelig
ISBN: 978-94-91539-83-1
268 pp.
