In Monte Artium

Periods of political and religious instability often caused migrations of craftspeople and artists, as happened in the southern Netherlands during the last two decades of the 16^th century. A number of Antwerp engravers began to settle in Paris on the ‘Rive Gauche’. They introduced the technique of the burin, which would soon be embraced by Parisian print and book publishers, who were used to work with woodcutters. Among them, we can mention Nicolas and Michel de Mathonière, sons of the woodcut publisher Denis de Mathonière. While Michel continued to edit woodcuts like his father, Nicolas saw the opportunities of burin engraving and decided to contribute to the diffusion of the ‘flemish’ prints in Paris at the end of the 16^th century till the 1630s. He collaborated intensively with the Antwerp engraver Justus Sadeler, who was residing in Venice. Beside, he co-operated with engravers with Flemish roots, who lived and worked in the French capital. During his career, Nicolas de Mathonière had engraved copies made after prints by ‘flemish’ and ‘dutch’ artists: e.g. Hieronymus Wierix and Crispijn de Passe. De Mathonière also republished — like his colleagues from the southern Netherlands — Antwerp prints of the 16^th century.

The Paris printer, print publisher and dealer Jean Messager, a contemporary of Nicolas de Mathonière, had a wide publisher fund with different subjects or genres. Messager collaborated with both French engravers/etchers (e.g. the young Claude Mellan, Michel Lasne, Léonard Gaultier) and engravers of Flemish origin. To the latter group belonged engravers who stayed in Italy for a while, such as Charles de Mallery and Melchior Tavernier. This explains partly the Italian influence in some of the prints he edited. To Messager, especially the production of small devotional prints was important. These were mainly copies of engravings by the families Wierix, Collaert and Sadeler. Because of Messagers trade network, the prints found their way to international markets.

So, the cases of the Mathonière family and Jean Messager clearly illustrate the importance of the Antwerp graphic arts for print production in Paris in terms of technique, subject, style and as an economic product. But this is only a small part of a larger story. French copies of prints of the southern Netherlands also found their way into Spain by French print publishers and dealers.

The Dutch draughtsman, engraver and print publisher Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) gave an impetus to the art of engraving in the Netherlands. His own professional activities and those of his ‘heirs’, the Matham, ensured the survival of his artistic work for decades, well into the 17^th century. When Goltzius founded his own publishing house in Haarlem in 1585, he began to built a stock of copperplates. This stock consisted of plates after his own designs and the designs of Mannerist artists such as Bartholomeus Spranger. From the late 1580 Goltzius trained his stepson Jacob Matham as an engraver and followed his engraving with a lot of attention. Jacob Matham imitated the drawing style of the models he had to copy with the burin. When Goltzius stayed in Italy for eight months (1592) his stepson continued to work independently in the Haarlem studio of Goltzius. At his return Goltzius changed the output of his enterprise. Many prints after Italian models and new designs of Goltzius in a more sober and classic style were released. When Hendrick Goltzius decided to concentrate on painting at the end of the 1590s, Jacob Matham took charge of the print workshop. He published prints after late drawings by the master as well as reproduction prints after Goltzius’ paintings. Gradually Matham developed his own — more sweet — style. Jacobs son Adriaen Matham continued to engrave inventions by Goltzius and his brother Theodore kept publishing prints after Goltzius (even with an imperial privilege). In this way, the artistic (graphic) language of the Haarlem master was guaranteed until decades after his dead.

During the years 1600 — 1630 there was extensive trade between France and Spain. The Spanish economy prospered because of the resources, provided by her overseas colonies in America. Small goods, among which prints, supplemented the cargos that were shipped from Sevilla to the New World. Besides, lots of engravings from France were sold to Spanish tradesmen who supplied the various local markets (Valencia, Sevilla, Madrid, Cordoba, Granada, Barcelona, Valladolid, Saragossa and Toledo). The Parisian print publishers Nicolas Mathonière, Simon Donget, Jean Le Clerc IV and their fellow publishers regularly closed business deals with Spanish merchants (e.g. Sébastien Carlet, Miquel Rosset, Antoine Sobrier, Barthélemy Liousse). The trade agreement could cover three dozen to no less than 17,000 prints. These large quantities of prints consisted of cheap copies of ‘old-fashioned’ Flemish prints from the end of the 16^th century (after Maarten de Vos for example), prints after French or Italian designs, small devotional prints and portrait engravings. The clientele — existing mostly of religious orders and other pious people — had no great demands on the artistic quality of the prints they bought.

We shift the attention of the international trade in prints and wide dissemination of visual imagery, to produce units of prints. By focusing on workshops of engravers, professional relationships between members of such an enterprise become clearer. Moreover, one gets insight in the changes of publishing funds over the years.

The famous Antwerp printers and book publishers Jan II and Balthasar I Moretus, worked closely together with the so called ‘Galle workshop’ for the production of book illustrations and title pages. Balthasar Moretus, who was responsible for the substantive direction of the company, had a particular interest in the appearance and quality of the illustrations adorning his publications. The correspondence between him and his brothers-in-law, the engravers Cornelis I and II Galle, who were established in Brussels during the second half of the 1630s, reveals the hierarchical relationship between the employer and his employees. Cornelis I Galle had to follow the publishing schedule and standards of Balthasar. In fact, the latter expected the Galle brothers to be available at all times. Nevertheless Cornelis I got some responsibilities from Balthasar, like buying the copperplates or the permission to alter images when necessary. During the production of engravings, annotated and corrected proof impressions were sent back and forth between the two parties. Consultation and confidence in each others skills seemed very crucial in the context of quality control.

We just briefly referred to the importance of the skills of the printmakers to achieve satisfying to remarkable results. During the 17^th century many engravers and etchers explored their medium with enthusiasm. They played with the composition of the etching grounds (e.g. ‘vernis mol’), manipulated the ink recipes, tried various manners of printing (e.g. ‘à la poupée’, ‘au réperage’). Sometimes the experiments could lead to new techniques, such as the ‘mezzotint’ or the ‘gelatine casting’.

Like their contemporary Peter Paul Rubens, a few Antwerp history painters showed some interest in the graphic medium. They committed engravers for long periods or projects of limited duration to engrave their designs. The bulk of their designs for prints were specifically created for engravings, only a relatively small number of prints reproduced their paintings. Thus the serving role of the prints in 17^th century Antwerp may not be overestimated. In the first place, prints seem to have been independent artistic creations (whether visual support tools to texts: e.g. book illustrations). The initiative for the publication of reproductive prints was often not taken by the painters themselves, but rather by print publishers, engravers, institutions or individuals.

The acts of the conference conclude with a contribution on the illustrator and engraver Johann-Baptist Bertheram, which sheds a light on the transitions in the print making business in the Netherlands on the eve of the 18^th century. Like many of his collegues, Bertheram produced mainly vignets and small illustrations for books. He especially collaborated with book publishers in Brussels, such as Eugène-Henri Frickx and François Foppens. In the course of the 17^th century Brussels publishers tried to develop their production and trade of books and succeeded in positioning themselves as a publishing town next to Antwerp. Bertheram maintained contact with the painter Richard van Orley, whose designs he usually translated into prints.