DECKER Paul the Elder Repraesentatio Belli, ob successionem in Regno Hispanico … Der Spanische Successions Krieg.

Berlin Kat. 103 (incomplete); Bobins III, 1165; Brunet V, 626 (French edition). No other copy with hand-coloured plates has appeared at auction (RBH).

Very rare set of plates illustrating scenes from the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), all beautifully coloured and heightened with gold by a contemporary hand. 

Decker’s suite depicts the battles of the complex series of engagements that became known as the War of the Spanish Succession (1701 – 1714). Prompted by the death of the last of the Spanish Habsburg Kings, the childless Charles II, and with a shifting group of alliances and a field of warfare that included not only Continental Europe and the Mediterranean, but also the Caribbean and North America, the War of the Spanish Succession has a case to be a true world war. In part an attempt to check French hegemony, the war featured a number of outstanding victories for the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy, including Blenheim, although the war was ultimately, at best, indecisive.

Each of Decker’s magnificent plates features a single engagement, depicted in the central portion of the plate, the whole image surrounded with a decorative border composed of architectural, allegorical and armorial symbols and motifs in the Baroque manner and a descriptive text concerning the battle. Many of the plates feature an additional small vignette of the battlefield keyed to the descriptive text and illustrating the placement of the armies and the key figures involved. There are both naval and military scenes, with the following depictions of battles with small, but highly detailed maps: Augsburg, Barcelona (2), Bethune, Bonn, Brugge, Casale, Douai, Gaeta, Ghent, Gibraltar (2), Huy, Kaiserswerth, Landau, Lisbon, Liege, Milan, Mallorca, Nenen, Nons, Oostende, Oudenaarde, Rissel (Lille), Sardinia, Schellenberg, Susa, Tortona, Tournai, Traben-Trarbach, Turin, Ulm, etc. 

It is a measure of the importance attached to Decker’s suite that the painter Ignaz Preissler used Decker’s plates as the basis for the decoration of an important tea service and garniture now (at least partly) in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York (see ‘Repraesentatio Belli, ob successionem in Regno Hispanico … A Tea Service and Garniture by the Schwarzlot Decorator Ignaz Preissler’ by Maureen Cassidy-Geiger). 

‘Such commemorative series were considered works of art as well as encapsulations of recent events and were highly valued by collectors of the period, who acquired them for their libraries or print cabinets.’ (Maureen Cassidy-Geiger).

Decker’s suite is very rare outside Germany: COPAC lists copies at the British Library and V & A only, while KVK lists copies at the Polish National Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Université de Charles de Gaulle (Lille) in France and the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam; the only traceable copy in North America is at Brown University.