History of the Collection
In the course of his work as a university librarian, Anton Roschmann assembled a print collection that today bears his name. It comprises 29 volumes holding around 6,400 graphic sheets mounted on thick handmade paper, one volume of drawings by Tyrolean artists, and an index volume. The volumes are uniformly bound in calf leather with embossed decoration; their format is 585 mm high and 425 mm wide.
Roschmann's arrangement
For the arrangement Roschmann followed the artist-based system of Pierre-Jean Mariette, who ordered the 500,000-print collection of Prince Eugene of Savoy alphabetically by artist and subdivided each artist geographically, chronologically and thematically. Roschmann organised the collection by the geographical regions in which the artists worked. Within Italy he distinguished Venetian, Lombard and Roman artists; from other European countries he formed groups of Tyrolean, German and French artists, with the Flemish and Dutch masters assigned to the Germans.
These are followed by a volume of artists' portraits, a volume of portraits of the Tyrolean sovereigns, and a volume of engravings from Prenner's Prodromus. Roschmann entered all the authors of the print models alphabetically in the index volume. Each volume opens with this artist register; before some authors he added short bibliographic notes borrowed from Sandrart's Teutsche Academie. He used a similar system to inventory the paintings at Ambras Castle.
Condition and survival
Except for the first volume of German artists, replaced in 1905, all volumes survive in their original state. The uniform mounting, however, caused a considerable loss in value: individual sheets were mostly trimmed to the image border, larger ones folded; in nearly all one finds ink show-through on the facing page, tears, creases or abrasions. Because the sheets are glued down, the watermarks cannot be examined.
In the 19th century some thirty lithographs with topographical (Tyrol) or historical (Andreas Hofer) subjects were added to the volume of Tyrolean artists. After the first volume of German artists was detached in 1905, its prints were given mounts and placed in seven cases. The collection suffered greater damage at the end of the First World War, when it was hidden in a damp cellar; it came through the Second World War unharmed. Today it is kept in the Special Collections department of the University Library of Innsbruck.
Origin and sources
The title page of the first volume names Roschmann as the compiler of the collection of "select copperplate engravings from the beginnings of the art to the present day," gathered partly from the sovereign's Kunstkammer at Ambras and the residence, but mostly through donations for the imperial-royal public library – completed in 1751.
One source lies in Ambras Castle. Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol (1529–1595), second son of Emperor Ferdinand I, is among the most important collector figures of the House of Habsburg. His art holdings followed the encyclopaedic-didactic programme of the late Renaissance, the Kunstkammer serving as a Theatrum Mundi. A substantial part of this graphic collection – about 5,000 sheets in 34 folios – was moved to Vienna in 1665, after the Tyrolean cadet line of the Habsburgs died out with Archduke Sigmund Franz and Emperor Leopold I had valuable volumes transferred from the Ambras library.
As registrar of the art collections and author of the inventories, Roschmann had the best overview of the prints remaining at Ambras. As early as 1746 he requested a case of copperplate engravings and drawings damaged by mice; he must have received final permission soon after, since his collection was completed that same year, 1751.
Artists and connections
Three especially compact groups of German artists – the German masters of the 15th century, the Dutch artists of the 16th century, and the engravings after Johannes Stradanus – are closely linked to the Ambras art holdings. Hans Burgkmair's Habsburg genealogy (represented by 48 woodcuts) and prints from the workshop of Dominik Custos most probably also come from Ambras.
Further sources are connected with the Innsbruck "Societas academica literaria." Roschmann maintained good relations with contemporary artists, many of whom are named in his Tyrolis Pictoria ac Statuaria. Franz Lactanz Firmian, for instance, made the portrait of Roschmann preserved, together with a series of characteristic heads, in the volume of Tyrolean artists (engraving by Franz Schaeur after Firmian, R-14-30-61).