In the Low Countries, the rise of printmaking coincided with the publication of the first art theoretical works. Research on early modern Italy and France has shown that new art theoretical concepts were vital catalysts to the rise of print copyright.¹⁰ As Katie Scott has argued for early modern France, ‘those concepts were not inspiration, expression and imagination, characteristic of Romanticism, but rather emulation, imitation and invention, central to the humanistic theory of art’.¹¹ Christopher Witcombe has noted that the situation in early modern Italy ‘raises questions about attitudes towards originality and invention, about notions of artistic property, and about the rights of both artists and engravers’.¹² The Italian art theorist Vasari had little regard for printmaking and paid hardly any attention to printmaking in the first edition of his Lives in 1550 – a lacuna he sought to fill in his edition of 1568.¹³ As Lisa Pon has argued, Vasari’s broad description of printmaking ‘reflected the still fluid status of the printmaker that Vasari struggled to reconcile with his conception of the figure of the artist as possessive author’.¹⁴ There is little research on these issues for the Low Countries. In what follows, therefore, I trace the early ideas about printmaking in Dutch art theory in the works of Dominicus Lampsonius (who corresponded with Vasari) and Karel van Mander, both of whom considered printmaking to be a liberal art and a central art in the history of northern art.

Traditionally, art – or the Greek techne, the Latin ars, and the Dutch const – meant any human skill, any way of mastering the world.¹⁵ The so-called ‘vulgar arts’ or ‘mechanical arts’ were those arts that involved payment and physical labour, which usually included painting and sculpture.¹⁶ They were opposed to the intellectual ‘liberal arts’ that had been the basis of education from Antiquity through to the early modern period. An education in the liberal arts was the basis for further study and was not, in principle, designed to enable one to indulge in a trade and earn money. In Renaissance Italy, some humanists began to argue that painting, sculpture, and architecture were also part of the ‘intellectual’ liberal arts, based on the argument of ‘design’ or ‘invention’ (the intellectual process of devising a new composition).¹⁷ Renaissance writers looked back to Antiquity in an attempt to find evidence of arguments that posited similarities between painting and poetry, for example, that suggested a higher status for the visual arts.¹⁸

In the Italian scheme of the liberal arts, printmaking never really achieved the same status as painting or sculpture. The situation was different in the Low Countries, where first Lampsonius and later Van Mander held printmaking in high esteem.¹⁹ In the first substantial art-theoretical text published in the Low Countries, Life of Lambert Lombart (1565), Lampsonius devised a self-aware Netherlandish approach to art which attached a profound importance to printmaking.²⁰ In the print series Pictorum aliquot celebrium Germaniae inferioris effigies (Effigies of Several Famous Painters from the Low Countries), Lampsonius likewise praised modern engraving as being on par with painting. The Effigies was published in Antwerp in 1572 by Volckxen Diericx, widow of the printer-publisher Hieronymus Cock. Lampsonius and Cock had begun the project in 1565 and had it been published on time, it would have been one of the first and most ambitious portrait series of painters in Europe.²¹ Lampsonius opened the Effigies with a dedicatory poem to Cock, in which he praised the late printer and his widow for raising the art of engraving to a high level.²² The Effigies, with its combination of texts and portraits, advocated the union of mind and body, and of artistic practices as a form of knowledge, which, according to Joanna Woodall and Stephanie Porras, stood in contrast to the Italian view of a separation of mind and body.²³

Edward H. Wouk has argued that Lampsonius purposefully avoided using Vasari’s term disegno in his writings. Lampsonius used the Greek term graphice to connote ‘the visual arts’, ‘design’, or ‘picturing’ in its stead.²⁴ He also applied the term to engraving in particular and suggested that graphice was associated with incising (e.g., on a tablet), implying that there was an ancient precedent to modern engraving (and thus linking the visual to the literary arts).²⁵ Moreover, Lampsonius argued that in ancient Greece graphice ‘was considered to be the first in rank of the liberal arts’ (next so sculpture), ‘practiced by the freeborn’ and ‘by those of noble birth’ – men who were educated and could devote ‘themselves to art not so much for material gain but for an honest pleasure’.²⁶ In his biography of Lambert Lombard, Lampsonius time and again emphasises how Lombard sacrifices material wealth to the love of art. Using this topos, Lampsonius celebrates the ancient ideal of the liberal arts as distinct from the vulgarity of making money.²⁷

It is sometimes unclear whether Lampsonius uses graphice in its more general meaning of ‘design’ or in its particular meaning of ‘engraving’, and this lack of clarity is significant. At some points in the text, depending on the translation, Lampsonius even seems to suggest that Lombard was himself able to engrave, and taught his pupils – most famously Hubert Goltzius (the numismatic, engraver, and printer-publisher who published Lampsonius’s Life of Lambert Lombard and acquired a privilege for the publication) – to do so.²⁸ In the last pages of the text, Lampsonius writes about other pupils whom Lombard trained ‘to draw and to engrave’, in this case using the more literal term incidendisque for engraving. The same term is used again a page later when Lampsonius describes ‘the correct methods of drawing and engraving that they [his pupils] had learned from Lombard’.²⁹ Today, Lombard is not known as an engraver, but perhaps some of those prints signed simply with ‘Lamb. Lombard’ – without using indicative terms for his precise role, such as inv. (invenit) for invented, or sculps. (sculpsit) for engraved – were, in fact, not only designed but also engraved by him (fig. 1).³⁰ This is highly speculative, but even if it were not the case, Lampsonius’s lack of clarity as to whether Lombard was able to engrave copperplates himself or whether he had his inventions engraved by others is telling.³¹ For Lampsonius, the precise distinction between these roles in printmaking was apparently not that important, and certainly not as important as the central point of his characterisation of Lombard as a knowledgeable artist who brought the Renaissance to the north, who followed the examples set by Mantegna, Dürer, and Raphael with regards to putting ‘their art in the public domain’, and who stood at the roots of Antwerp’s rise as a centre of copperplate engraving.³²

In his Schilderboeck (1604), Karel van Mander gave ‘pride of place’ to prints because of their ‘technical virtuosity and topical invention’, according to Walter Melion.³³ Van Mander’s claim about the development of northern visual art as distinct from Italian art is much like Lampsonius’s. Though he claims to write about painting and the most famous painters, Van Mander devotes quite a lot of words to printmaking as well as glass painting, as he considers both to be visual arts based upon drawing, the basis of all liberal arts.³⁴ He has high regard for artists such as Lucas van Leyden and Hendrick Goltzius (describing each of them as ‘[an] excellent painter, engraver, and glass painter’). Van Mander even includes a figure such as Hubert Goltzius (‘excellent painter, copperplate engraver, and history-writer’), even though he has little to say about his paintings, simply because he was a knowledgeable figure and thus in keeping with his ideal of the liberal arts.³⁵ Van Mander mentions Hubert’s activities as a printer-publisher and his publication of a book with images of ancient medals – as well as the fact that he was a pupil of Lombard. As Melion has demonstrated, Van Mander viewed copper-engraving as complementary to painting.³⁶ For Van Mander, a print was not merely a reproduction but a form of art in and of itself, an object in dialogue with, rather than a slave to, the art of painting. Furthermore, and especially in relation to the development of northern art, Van Mander considered that the medium of print could innovate in its own right and influence the art of painting, seeing both arts in opposition to what he called ‘vulgar manual labour’.³⁷ Like Lampsonius, he argued that both painting and printmaking are liberal arts.³⁸

Van Mander also described the importance of prints to art history. He lists several artists, including Lucas Cranach, whom he knows as great artists because of their prints, not because of their paintings.³⁹ Van Mander mentions prints in about a fifth of his biographies of Netherlandish painters, which were generally the best-known artists.⁴⁰ This may be because the work of the most successful painters were most often published in print, but at least partly the saying ‘publish or perish’ also seems to be relevant to early modern visual art. Print was an efficient way to establish an artist’s reputation, which was only further anchored within the canon of art history as time passed by. In Van Mander’s biographies, most descriptions of prints start with the description of the topic or composition, followed by neutral terms that they have ‘come out’ in print (uytgeghaen, uyt laten gaen, or uyt comen), without making explicit if the designer also made the plate or woodblock. In some cases, he is very clear about who made the designs or plates, for instance in Maarten van Heemskerck’s biography, who ‘did not cut himself’ and whose designs were engraved, among others, by the ‘ingenious philosophical’ Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert.⁴¹ When the engraver, etcher, or woodcutter is mentioned, it is usually with words of high praise. So, while Van Mander sometimes distinguishes between the maker of the design and the maker of the matrix, he places neither in a position of superiority over the other. In those cases in which artists fulfilled both roles, such as Goltzius or Van Leyden, Van Mander praises their exceptional art (const) as engravers, but he put no real emphasis upon the fact that they had also produced the original design.⁴²

Even though ‘invention’ was a crucial concept in the scheme of the liberal arts, Netherlandish art theorists like Lampsonius and Van Mander were full of praise for the exponents of the manual skill of engraving. In their descriptions, the liberal art of printmaking consisted of both intellectual ‘invention’ and manual ‘skill’: a union of mind and body. But, crucially, these roles could be performed by different people, and the division of labour in printmaking was not seen as a problem. After all, the final product – the print itself – in its very nature demonstrated the union of mind and body. Notably, according to Van Mander, ‘invention’ was different from the Italian disegno in that it could mean both the invention of a composition, but also what we would call a ‘technical’ invention.⁴³ In other words, Van Mander did not yet distinguish between what would later be protected by copyright and what would be protected by patents.

In the second half of the sixteenth century, several successful publishing houses were founded in the Low Countries. The first was Hieronymus Cock’s and Volcxken Diericx’s In de Vier Winden in Antwerp and, to name just a few examples, their prints designed by Pieter Bruegel the Elder or the innovative images of local, so-called ‘vernacular’ landscapes of Antwerp’s surroundings. Cock and Diericx became successful not only because of their excellent market instincts, but also because they implemented a far-reaching division of labour. It was common practice for the design, engraving, and printing to be carried out by different people, while the printer-publisher co-ordinated these tasks as well as organised financing. Most printer-publishers were originally trained as engravers and remained as guildmembers, even if their actions were now partially or even primarily those of the merchant-entrepreneur.⁴⁴ Painters like Bruegel were paid for their design, while Cock attracted talented engravers both within and without the city of Antwerp such as Philips Galle, Cornelis Cort, and Giorghio Ghisi. Engravers were often well-paid as it took quite some time to engrave a copperplate, but also because the art of engraving was highly valued.⁴⁵ After Cock’s death in 1570, Galle, who originated from Haarlem, moved to Antwerp in order to continue some of Cock’s earlier businesses alongside Diericx, eventually establishing a successful printing house that would flourish well into the seventeenth century.⁴⁶

Other successful ‘mega firms’ founded around this time were the publishing houses of Crispijn de Passe in Cologne and Utrecht, Hendrik Hondius in The Hague, and Claes Jansz Visscher in Amsterdam. These large houses from this period are known for the inventiveness of their compositions and for the production of large quantities of prints.⁴⁷ Following Cock’s lead, they hired from among the best designers (usually painters), who did not object to having their work transferred to print by others, nor to the production of the large numbers of prints. These houses aimed to produce high-quality work, work which was result of the combination of invention and skill. Of course, there also existed a lower end of the market in this period, and there was a great variety in the types of prints. It is important to emphasise, however, that at the upper end of the market, artists in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century – unlike in later periods – did not object to a division of labour, nor to taking on different roles per project.⁴⁸ Nor did the high volume of prints detract from their status.

Copying had always been a standard practice in the visual arts. The term copy derives from the Latin copia, referring to plenty, abundance, and copiousness.⁴⁹ It was not until the early modern period that the meaning of copia changed into ‘copy’ or ‘imitation’ in the vernacular. In this period, the words ‘copy’, ‘imitation’, or even ‘counterfeit’ did not necessarily come bound with the negative associations they would later acquire. In Dutch, conterfeitsel was used for portraits, meaning an exact and individual (not idealising) copy of nature. At the same time, it came to be used in the modern meaning of counterfeiting an original. The Dutch kopij was commonly used for the original book manuscript, implying a right to copy for the rightful owner of the kopij. The terms nadruk (reprint, or literally ‘afterprint’) or naesnyden (‘re-cutting’, or literally ‘after-cutting’) were used for copying books and prints. For artist-artisans, the imitation of either nature or exemplary man-made objects was central to their work. Emulation – that is, imitation and improvement – was an important concept in art theory. Furthermore, even small adjustments were often enough to consider an image as a new work.⁵⁰ The advent of the printing press and the potential for creating multiple copies where once there would only have been one, would change the status of copy.

It has often been argued that copying became a problem not because it infringed on the intellectual property of the maker, but because it encroached on someone’s capital investment.⁵¹ Indeed, the argument of the need to defray was used in applications for privileges. However, this does not fully explain why privileges were obtained for some prints and not for others. It was not compulsory to apply for a privilege and it seems to have been exceptional to do so.⁵² What follows is a selection of privileges for single prints and print series, as well as for individual printmakers, mostly taken from secondary literature, with an emphasis on the sixteenth century (during which the first privileges for prints were granted in the Low Countries) and the first half of the seventeenth century. It is not a complete survey of all sixteenth- and seventeenth-century privileged prints in the Low Countries and further archival research may reveal more examples as yet unknown.

Obtaining privileges for prints (as opposed to maps or books) seem to have been relatively rare in the sixteenth-century Low Countries, and the following number amongst the handful of known cases.⁵³ In 1536 and 1538, the painter Jan Vermeyen acquired privileges from the Council of Brabant to print certain portraits, a map, and an image of Emperor Charles v’s expedition to Tunis.⁵⁴ In 1543, the Antwerp printer Hans Liefrinck was granted a privilege for a print of the Siege of Heinsberg as well as for a print after Lombard’s painting Rebecca at the Well.⁵⁵ Hieronymus Cock received numerous imperial privileges for maps, first from Charles v and later Philip ii, but also for print series such as Views of Roman Ruins, Small Landscapes, and Liberal Arts, with Pallas, Apollo and Industry (the latter after Frans Floris). Cock’s privileged single prints included the following: Giorgio Ghisi’s engravings after Raphael’s School of Athens and Lombard’s Last Supper, Cornelis Cort’s prints after Maarten van Heemskerck (such as the Story of Tobit), as well as several engraved by Philips Galle after Pieter Bruegel.⁵⁶ In 1559, the thirty-four plates of The Funeral Procession of Charles v, designed by Cock and engraved by the brothers Jan and Lucas van Doetecum, were published with a privilege by Christopher Plantin.⁵⁷ The Antwerp printmaker Hieronymus Wierix had also acquired privileges for several of his (religious) prints.⁵⁸ In 1595, the Haarlem powerhouse of Hendrick Goltzius famously acquired a six-year privilege from Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph ii. A couple of years later, around 1598, Goltzius handed over his printmaking activities to his stepson Jacob Matham, who was granted a renewed privilege from Rudolph ii in 1601. Others in Goltzius’s circle also applied for privileges with the emperor.⁵⁹

In early seventeenth-century Antwerp, Rubens acquired a threefold general privilege from the authorities in the Southern Netherlands, the Dutch Republic, and France.⁶⁰ Notably, Rubens claimed in his letters that he published prints not for financial gain but to protect their quality and propagate his art; the ideal already proclaimed by Lampsonius. Rather than dismissing this as cheap talk to obscure Rubens’s true financial motives, at least part of the reason for acquiring a privilege was to ensure the quality and reliability of prints after his compositions. Over the years, Rubens employed several engravers (and a woodcarver) to make plates from his designs, a process he followed closely, often having the plates adjusted until he was satisfied with the final result.⁶¹ The most talented among these engravers was Lucas Vorsterman, who in 1622 got into a serious fight with Rubens over the relative status of the engraver and the painter.⁶² Perhaps not coincidentally, Vorsterman applied for a privilege in the same year, which was approved on 11 July 1622.⁶³

In the 1630s a prolonged trial about the supposedly violated privileges of the engraver Jan-Baptist Barbé divided Antwerp painters and engravers into opposing camps – which then engaged in a nasty conflict that lasted for several years in- and outside courtrooms.⁶⁴ Rubens supported Barbé, as he had also been involved in court cases about his violated privileges.⁶⁵ Mostly, such court cases testify to the difficulty of enforcing privileges, something that is also known from the book printing industry. This may be the reason why there were few court cases or complaints.⁶⁶ What is also notable is the role of the guild of St. Luke in the Barbé affair. The guild’s aldermen were appointed by the Council of Brabant to mediate and collect testimonies, while the accused engravers argued that their traditional freedom as guild members allowed them to engrave, print, and sell prints, implicitly opposing this freedom to the legal privilege awarded by the Council of Brabant to Barbé.⁶⁷

The majority of print privileges in the Dutch Republic awarded by the States-General between 1593 and 1650 were for ‘nationalistic’ images such as ‘portraits of nobility, state funerals, maps of battles, and city views’.⁶⁸ In the Dutch Republic, a privilege from the States-General for such prints did not merely provide some protection for one’s investment, but, as argued by Nadine Orenstein, may have been seen as a seal of approval from the state.⁶⁹ The abovementioned sixteenth-century privileges of Jan Vermeyen and some of Cock’s were probably granted for this same reason, as a seal of approval. It may be argued that such ‘nationalistic’ imagery contained a particular type of claim to truth, and that privileges served to confirm the reliability of such claims. In that sense, such privileges were the mirror image of censorship, where the authorities determined an image or text unreliable or unwanted. Peter Parshall and others have demonstrated that, in the early modern period, in particular in northern Europe, the truth claims of images, especially in printed portraits, became a new class of representation: some prints were seen as ‘visual facts’. This class of representation was determined by function: images that were reports of specific events or portrayals (counterfeits) of nature.⁷⁰ Such prints made them useful or instructive, which fitted with the popular quotation for ‘profit and pleasure’, taken from Horace’s Ars Poetica.⁷¹ The idea that imagery could contain truth claims – and affixing Horace’s quote onto imagery – was an argument for the elevation of the visual arts to the liberal arts.

Whereas privileges were usually awarded to individual prints, the States-General could also award a general privilege that would protect all the prints of a certain printmaker.⁷² In the second half of the seventeenth century, the requests for print privileges in the Dutch Republic seem to have shifted from the States-General to the States of Holland.⁷³ Again, the majority was for portraits, land- and cityscapes, battles, and the commemoration of state events.⁷⁴

Notably, one could also acquire a privilege for the work of (long) deceased authors or artists.⁷⁵ In printmaking, the owner of the original copperplates was often seen as the lawful owner and could apply for privileges. Barbé, for instance, owned some of the copperplates of his deceased father-in-law Hieronymus Wierix and received a privilege as had Wierix before him – a confirmation of the status and reliability of these prints (and obviously not a protection of Barbé’s own inventions). Next to the plates that came into his possession through his wife, Barbé attempted to get more of Wierix’s copperplates from the inheritance of his sister-in-law by having her declared insane.⁷⁶ The value of good copperplates is also evident from another remarkable testimony: in 1639 Justa Galle attested that after the death of her husband, the engraver Adriaen Collaert, several copperplates worth a hundred pond Vlems were taken from her house and later found at the house of the publisher and art dealer Martinus van den Ende.⁷⁷

The ownership of the matrix (the woodblock or the copperplate) was crucial while roles were fluid in printmaking. There are countless examples of engravers who sometimes designed and/or printed-published their own prints, but who also engraved for others. The division of labour between the designer and the maker of the matrix was sometimes specified in print, being addressed as inv. (invented) and sculps. (cut or engraved).⁷⁸ These print addresses demonstrate an awareness of the division of labour, but there was no standardised format and there are countless examples of vagueness, in which one or more roles were not specified. In short, there was often a division of labour, but it was not seen as a fixed relationship, nor was its fluid nature considered problematic.

However, distinguishing between the invention and the making of the matrix sometimes became an issue in court cases, where some attempts were made to assert a definition that differentiated between or define (intellectual) ‘invention’ and (manual) ‘skill’. In some of these rare court cases and disputes, arguments were developed about when and for what privileges were justified. In legal disputes, arguments had to be formulated, and positions taken. For instance, Barbé and his supporters argued that if inventions were not protected, new inventions would be discouraged, since ‘renowned masters would refrain from making certain pieces, out of fear they would be copied by copyists and bunglers’.⁷⁹ His opponents, on the other hand, questioned whether it was justified for Barbé to have a privilege for the inventions (i.e., compositions) of others. They also criticised him for apparently not even recognising his own privileged prints. In fact, most of Barbé’s privileged prints known today were invented by others.⁸⁰ One example was the vera effigies (meaning ‘true face’ or ‘true likeness’) of the Jesuit Marcello Mastrilli, designed by Nicolaas van der Horst and engraved and published with a privilege by Barbé.⁸¹ The most remarkable argument Barbé’s opponents made was their claim that ‘engraving is a liberal art, like painting’ and therefore it ‘cannot be privileged’.⁸² Remembering Lampsonius’s ideal of the liberal arts as being opposed to the vulgarity of making money, they made a valid point (one which, naturally, suited their own interests). It was also a familiar argument that a real-world original (a particular person, a particular plant, or a particular city) could not be protected by a privilege, and that anyone was free to make a truthful copy.⁸³ However, it was often such prints, with their claim to truth, that were privileged as stamps of reliability.

Privileges could also be awarded for ‘technical inventions’ that were related to printmaking, such as the printing on fabrics, the making of patterns for gold leather, the incising or printing of baleen, and new types of production methods for paper, paper mills, or ink.⁸⁴ Among the most remarkable was Magdalena de Passe’s privilege for sleeping caps of different types fabrics with portraits or cityscapes (apparently these were printed onto the fabric). De Passe probably received the privilege for the technique or making process.⁸⁵ In printmaking, there were arguably no big technological breakthroughs until the invention of lithography in the late eighteenth century, but there were inventions such as the printing on fabrics, mezzotint, or methods of colour printing.⁸⁶ For such new or improved techniques, privileges could be acquired, and these are often considered as the predecessors of modern patents. Such ‘inventor-privileges’ protected a technique or making process as an impersonal procedure that could be easily stolen by others. This was opposite to the earlier idea of personal skill, which was seen as the result of experience, stored in the body of the artist-artisan.⁸⁷

Most Netherlandish prints, across all market segments, were not privileged. Even a printmaker such as Claes Jansz. Visscher, who produced subject matter such as city views and political prints that might easily have been granted a privilege, never applied for one.⁸⁸ At the lower end of the market, privileges could be obtained for cheap prints, but this seems to have been rare. Exact figures are lacking, but the large number of utilitarian devotional prints (belekens) in the Southern Netherlands suggests that only a tiny fraction of such prints was ever privileged.⁸⁹ At the upper end of the market, the most famous ‘artistic’ printmakers are notably absent from the Dutch archives. There is no evidence, for instance, that Rembrandt ever requested a privilege, even though he included the inscription ‘cum pryvl’ in his famous The Descent of the Cross from 1633.⁹⁰ As I will argue below, Rembrandt and some other Dutch painters took printmaking in a new direction, experimenting with the technique of etching and thereby keeping the whole production process in their own hands.

Next to privileges, there were other approaches in printmaking to deal with copying and multiples. As mentioned in the introduction, these were the seemingly opposite approaches of either making full use of the potential efficiency of printmaking and producing as many prints as possible for the lowest possible cost, or the deliberate ignoring of such possibilities, instead producing small print runs that were valued for their rarity and beauty. In the first approach, one can trace the contours of a more modern industrial thinking. In many cases, efficiency was merely cost efficiency and not very innovative. But with its focus on improving production processes, this approach could theoretically also lead to the improvement of techniques, which became the ideal of industrial production and inventor-privileges or patents for new technology. In the latter approach, one can discern the contours of more modern ideas about originality, rarity, and beauty of the ‘fine arts’, a new set of ideals that came to full fruition during the eighteenth century.

From the onset of printmaking in the sixteenth-century Low Countries, large volumes of cheap prints were made.⁹¹ This continued to be the case throughout the seventeenth century.⁹² Such prints, it could be argued, did not need the claim to reliability in the form of a privilege. Nor were privileges economically necessary. The goal was to outcompete others by the most efficient production process, for instance by endlessly reworking old plates and producing as many prints as possible from one plate. Because of economies of scale, large printing houses had an advantage over smaller producers. In Antwerp, such large printing houses were often run by families who had acquired a prominent position in the second half of the sixteenth century, but became more detached from their artistic-artisanal roots and transformed into merchant-entrepreneurs in the seventeenth century, such as the Galle or Van Merlen families.⁹³

The Galle and Van Merlen families, as well as some of their colleagues in the Dutch Republic, focused on reworking old plates and selling large numbers of copies of earlier inventions, sometimes adding new names.⁹⁴ Some family names were repeated on prints throughout the century and became marketed brand names, suggestive of high quality, such as ‘Galle’.⁹⁵ The copying that had been a problem for Rubens or Barbé, was, one could say, avoided by endlessly copying. This was copia – in its sense of abundance, copiousness, and multiples – to the max. In the 1630s, Barbé and his supporters had claimed that inferior quality would not only damage the reputation of guild members, it would even disgrace the ‘renowned and laudable art of engraving’.⁹⁶ A diametrically opposed testimony was given on 11 August 1670 by the Antwerp print-seller Theodoor ii van Merlen, in a declaration about the sales of ‘several small parchment and paper belekens’.⁹⁷ Generally, these belekens were cheap, utilitarian prints: objects of everyday use that have rarely survived to the present day.⁹⁸ A more expensive variant, and one more likely to have survived the predations of time, was that printed on parchment – the set of eighteen prints currently in the British Museum are a good example of this (fig. 2). These small prints (6,8 × 9,5 cm each), printed on parchment and hand-coloured, are signed ‘T v. Merlen’, ‘C v. Merlen’, or ‘Cor v. Merlen’ (Cornelis van Merlen, son of Theodoor ii).⁹⁹ It is possible that the colouring was done by Van Merlen’s daughters Constantia and Susanna Maria, who were registered as masters in colouring prints (afsetterse) in the guild of St. Luke.¹⁰⁰ The subject matter, Bible history and saints, also fits the description of belekens in the archival document.

Van Merlen’s testimony also informs us of the status of these printed images: they were nothing more than cremerije, which may be translated as ‘knick-knacks’ or, more literally, ‘stuff sold by peddlers’. Furthermore, the document states that Theodor van Merlen is an ‘engraver and seller of small pictures’. But then Van Merlen seems to have changed his mind and the clerk crossed out the word ‘engraver’, leaving his profession as merely the ‘seller of small pictures’. He probably did this as to emphasise that he was a peddler, a seller of small goods – and not an engraver. He appears to have purposefully diminished his status and skills as an engraver. This is remarkable, since guild members such as Van Merlen were generally proud of their (moral) status as masters and even saw their products as morally loaded objects.¹⁰¹ The end of the document contains a similar statement, namely that Van Merlen is ‘publicly known here as a peddler’.¹⁰² Van Merlen makes this statement for a very pragmatic reason: he was testifying as to the low value of the prints to avoid paying high taxes. But both his testimony and his business practices are also exemplary of the efficiency (or industrial) approach in printmaking, which focused on quantity instead of quality, and was unapologetic over its intention of turning a profit.

In contrast to cheap multiples, a new category of prints materialised in the seventeenth century: expensive ‘artistic’ collector items, prized for their beauty and rarity. This new category of print and artist emerged with the etchings of some innovative Dutch painters from the first quarter of the seventeenth century, as is argued by Ilja M. Veldman.¹⁰³ The landscape etchings by Willem Buytwech and Essias van de Velde, for instance, were appreciated for ‘artistic’ reasons, while somewhat later in the century, prints by Rembrandt realised incredible prices, most famously the Hundred Guilder Print (Christ preaching).¹⁰⁴

In his Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkunst of 1678, the art theorist Samuel van Hoogstraten wrote that the collecting of ‘paper art’ had become very popular, leading to incredible prices being paid for some prints; a print by Lucas van Leyden, for instance, was bought by Rembrandt for eighty rijksdaalders.¹⁰⁵ Painters like Rembrandt used prints in their workshops, but he was also one among a growing group of print collectors in the seventeenth century.¹⁰⁶ In the Inleyding, Van Hoogstraten extensively praised prints in a chapter titled ‘To make his art public’ as the ‘ushers and interpreters’, which show us the ‘content of artful works’.¹⁰⁷ Like his predecessors, Van Hoogstraten praised Albrecht Dürer and Lucas van Leyden, who had gained most fame ‘by the burin’. But since that time, ‘the burin has been almost completely separated from the paintbrush’.¹⁰⁸ Indeed, it was not burin engraving, but the technique of etching that was explored by painters into new directions.¹⁰⁹ Whereas the art of engraving took years of training, etching was much easier and more like the free technique of drawing. Painters could thus relatively easily experiment with etching to produce more drawing-like prints.

Among these experimental etchers was Hercules Segers, whose prints are highly valued today.¹¹⁰ During his life, however, the ‘great’ Hercules Segers remained poor and no one wanted to buy his prints, according to Van Hoogstraten. Nevertheless, Segers made art with ‘unparalleled diligence’, including prints on paper and on cloth, which Van Hoogstraten refers to as printed paintings.¹¹¹ It would not be until after his premature death that Seger’s prints gained the high prices – up to sixteen ducats – they deserved.¹¹² Rembrandt was an early adopter of Seger’s work.¹¹³ Van Hoogstraten was a pupil of Rembrandt but he hardly mentions any of Rembrandt’s own printmaking activities, which is remarkable since Rembrandt attained international fame for his prints well before his paintings.¹¹⁴ Other art theorists spent more words on printmaking. In 1662, in his Gulden Cabinet van de edel vry schilder-const, Cornelis de Bie praised the triumph of the etching, devoting the third part of his book to ‘Architects, Sculptors, and Printmakers’.¹¹⁵ In his Groot Schilderboek of 1707, Gerard de Lairesse also devoted much attention to printmaking, which is perhaps not surprising as he was an etcher himself.¹¹⁶

Arnold Houbraken mentions printmaking in several of the biographies in his De groote schouburgh der Nederlantschen konstschilders en schilderessen (1718), usually at the end. He praises prints for their instructive value: portraits serve as memory of the ‘greatest men’ of the ‘arts and sciences’ and as a learning tool for young painters. Yet he also praised more ‘artistic’ prints, such as the ones by Segers (where he closely follows Van Hoogstraten), and the print collection of his teacher Jacob Lavecq, a great liefhebber of prints.¹¹⁷ Houbraken notes that Rembrandt’s etchings, which were ‘natural and inimitable’, were in high demand with collectors and that his prints alone would have been enough to ensure his fame.¹¹⁸ While praising Rembrandt for a certain technical ‘invention’ in reworking etched plates, he criticises him for failing to share it with his pupils, which meant that his ‘secret’ went with him to the grave.¹¹⁹ Houbraken also mentions how Rembrandt consciously produced small print runs, making only slight adjustments between different states. This ‘brought him great fame, and no little profit’, as print collectors (printkonstlievenden) were not satisfied until they had acquired every state of a print.¹²⁰ In a similar vein Filippo Baldinucci, another of Rembrandt’s early biographers, wrote that Rembrandt had made a lot of money from selling his prints and that he had even bought back his own prints at auction to make them scarcer, increase their price, and enhance their status.¹²¹

The combination of admiration and critique also characterised the reception of Rembrandt’s Hundred Guilder Print soon after it was first printed in the 1640s. It was admired as a beautiful and excellent print, but some thought the price exorbitant.¹²² One early impression of the Hundred Guilder Print was inscribed around 1700, noting that ‘this print was retouched by Rembrandt with his own hand’.¹²³ As Amy Golahny has noted, this phrase is puzzling but probably refers to the way Rembrandt manipulated the ink when wiping the copperplate.¹²⁴ Indeed, the early impressions are all a bit different with regards to their so-called ‘plate tone’, which ‘was considered an addition by the artist himself’.¹²⁵ In other cases, too, Rembrandt prints were appreciated as being ‘printed by the artist himself’, or because the prints were a proof, counterproof, or maculature that showed the artist’s working process.¹²⁶

Many copies were made of the Hundred Guilder Print as well as of other Rembrandt prints.¹²⁷ Several of Rembrandt’s plates were reworked and reprinted until well into the nineteenth and even the twentieth century. Some of Rembrandt’s prints were copied on new plates to be inserted into folio Bibles. These copies were simplified, mirrored, and text was added, while Rembrandt was credited as the inventor in some cases.¹²⁸ While artists like Rubens had tried to prevent such copying practices through the acquisition of privileges, in the case of Rembrandt, print connoisseurs were urged to differentiate between original and copy based upon artistic quality, beauty, and rarity.¹²⁹ Even if the ‘invention’ was copied, a copy could never be the result of the artist’s ‘own hand’. A privilege to protect the invention made less sense, as the value of such prints – as well as their ‘reliability’ – was determined by the limited editions (rarity) and the hand of the artist. In the experimental strategy of Rembrandt, Segers, and the like – though this was not always appreciated at the time – invention and skill were unified within an individual artist, creating prints that were valued as original works of art in limited editions, compliant within the rising ideals of the fine arts.¹³⁰

During the eighteenth century – and more fully in the nineteenth century – modern copyright and patent laws were implemented throughout Europe to prevent copying. Copyright protected the original works of authors or creators, while patents protected new inventions. What came to be protected by law – ‘original works’, the ‘author’, the ‘creator’, ‘new’, and ‘invention’ – were concepts that once had very different meanings, if they existed at all. Through the lens of printmaking, we can trace some of these changes.

Early modern printing privileges are often investigated as the predecessors of modern copyright. Printing privileges protected the ‘invention’ (composition) against copying, and in this sense, they were the forerunners of copyright. But the path from privileges to modern copyright (and patents) was messy and complicated. In the early modern Low Countries, general privileges were granted to artists such as Goltzius or Rubens on the basis of their status and networks – they were, therefore, a form of patronage. These official privileges affirmed the status and reliability of their prints. The affirmation of reliability also relates to the singular prints for which most privileges were granted: images with a certain eyewitness or truth claim. Crucially, these claims were to a truth approved by the ruling authority. Most prints, however, were published without privileges, and printmakers also adopted other approaches to managing copying and the multiples of prints, concentrating either on producing large quantities of cheap prints or on creating limited editions in the artist’s ‘own hand’.

Printmaking was a disruptive image technology because it produced images in multiples on an unprecedented scale and challenged many aspects that had been standard practice in the visual arts, such as copying. The approaches printmakers took to questions of multiples and copying went hand in hand with new ideas about invention and skill in art theory. The variety of approaches used by printmakers resulted in a variety of products whose status ranged from images with a claim to truth (that were for ‘profit and pleasure’), to purely utilitarian products produced in large quantities, to ‘original’ works of art by the artist’s hand that were valued for aesthetic reasons.