Charles I on the scaffold, 30 January 1648/49.
From Charles I [?], Eikon Basilike ([London?] 1648/49); contrast William Marshall's allegorical frontispiece, a main feature of most early editions. The present illustration ("Fig. 37, P[eter Paul] Bouche excu."), reproduced with permission from the Special Collections of the University of Virginia, is tipped into an early reprint of the Eikon (= F. F. Madan, A New Bibliography of the "Eikon Basilike" of King Charles the First, Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications, n. s. 3 [Oxford, 1950], no. 24) from some other source; it is presumably the same print that T. S. R. Boase cites as accompanying the Psalms in a Bill-Barker Bible (1680).* A very similar print (also omitted by Madan) with the caption "The Martyrdom of King Charles ye First" forms the frontispiece of an Eikon in Harvard's collection (= Madan no. 11 [var.]), Wing 2168:06a; compare this unassigned Project Canterbury print, with its careful regard for Whitehall's architectural details.
| * T. S. R. Boase, "Macklin and Bowyer," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 26 (1963), 148-177, 158: "Several Bibles, such as that published by John Bill and Christopher Barker in 1680 (Bodleian: Buchanan e.94) ... add ... as illustrations to the Psalms a plate of Guy Fawkes with his lantern outside the Houses of Parliament ("The wicked is snared in the work of his oune hands": Psalm ix, 16 (Pl. 22c)) and one of "King Charles I murthered: Ps. xxxi." |
Charles I on the scaffold (from Tragicum theatrum ... [Amsterdam, 1649]) // Back to Eikon Basilike |
