Exhibition Masters Of Old Netherlandish Engraving At The Hermitage Until June 2

From February 14, the Graphics Gallery of the Hermitage presents an exhibition Masters of Old Netherlandish Engraving. You will see a collection of engravings and drawings from the 15th to the 20th centuries, which do not always find their place in the halls of major museums. To visit it, simply purchase an entrance ticket to the Hermitage (500 rubles).

Key Information About The Exhibition

The Graphics Gallery is located in the halls of the main museum complex, in the Winter Palace, in halls No. 324 – 328 (Dvortsovaya Embankment, 34, entrance from the Palace Square side).

This is already the third exhibition in this exhibition space, which is designed to acquaint the viewer with the richest collection of Western European engravings and drawings. The first was devoted to the relationship between engraving and drawing, the second to early Dutch drawing.

The new exhibition continues the previous one and introduces the viewer to another aspect of the collection of Old Netherlandish graphics – the print. This part of the Hermitage collection is exceptionally extensive, including a whole series of significant works and is able to present key stages in the development of Dutch metal engraving almost exhaustively.

Chronologically, the exhibition covers just under a century – from the late 1500s to the early 1510s, the time of the creation of early prints by the outstanding engraver Lucas van Leyden, and until the mid-1580s, the time of the disintegration of the Old Netherlands into Protestant Holland and Catholic Flanders.

In total, over a hundred sheets are displayed in the Graphics Gallery. Among them are compositions on biblical and antique subjects, allegories, portraits, landscapes, genre-satirical scenes, ornamental and architectural graphics. Among the masters whose works can be seen at the exhibition are Lucas van Leyden, Marten van Heemskerck, Frans Floris, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Jan van der Straet, and many others.

The only woodcut complementing the story of Old Netherlandish metal engraving is the frieze Customs and Lifestyle of the Turks, executed according to the compositions of Pieter Coecke van Aelst.

So far, the Hermitage collection of Old Netherlandish engravings has not been the subject of special study or a separate exhibition. The exhibition in the Graphics Gallery should not only acquaint visitors with the best samples of Dutch prints of that time but also lay the foundation for its comprehensive study.

Artists Represented At The Exhibition

The first section of the exhibition consists of works by Lucas van Leyden, the Dutch Dürer – a painter and draftsman, one of the most brilliant virtuosos of European engraving of the 16th century. Throughout his life, he experimented with styles and manners of engraving, always remaining open to the experience of other masters. The selected prints by van Leyden allow one to become acquainted with his engraving work, in which the master addressed various genres and themes: Expulsion from Paradise, Dance of Mary Magdalene, Mars, Venus, and Cupid, Dentist, Virgil in a Box, and so on.

The main attention in the next section, dedicated to engravings from the 1540s – 1560s, is paid to the activity of Hieronymus Cock. An artist and engraver, he founded the publishing house On Four Winds in Antwerp, which specialized in the publication of high-quality artistic engravings and eventually became the largest in Europe.

Initially, Cock paid special attention to working with artists who chose Italian art as their reference: Lambert Lombard, Maarten van Heemskerck, Frans Floris. At the exhibition, among others, prints from Floris’s popular series Labors of Hercules, Seven Liberal Arts, and Five Senses are presented.

However, over time, the publisher turned to art that developed national traditions. His cooperation with the great Pieter Bruegel the Elder became key and most significant. In the Graphics Gallery, you can see both Boschian phantasmagorias by Bruegel from the series Seven Deadly Sins and prints from the series Great Landscapes.

The exhibition concludes with Antwerp engraving from the 1570s to the first half of the 1580s, characterized by a wide thematic and genre diversity. This includes works by Jan van der Straet, who created compositions of the battle genre (series History of the Medici), animalistic scenes (series Hunts and Stable of Don Juan of Austria), cycles on religious subjects (Four Last Things and Acts of the Apostles).

Special attention is paid to religious themes, which during this period – a time of dramatic confrontations – occupied an important place in Dutch prints. These could be images of biblical characters, various allegories, compositions on moralizing subjects. However, perhaps the most popular and in-demand were then picture stories – cycles on subjects from the Old and New Testaments, apocrypha, the lives of the apostles, and saints.

Later, the publisher Claes Janszoon Visscher compiled these cycles into one of the most famous Illustrated Bibles – Theatrum Biblicum (in the Russian tradition – Piscator’s Bible), which became an important iconographic source for artists and iconographers of Russia in the second half of the 17th century. A copy of Theatrum Biblicum is also presented at the exhibition.

A separate place is occupied by the frieze Customs and Lifestyle of the Turks, created according to the compositions of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, – one of the most impressive examples of Dutch woodcut of the mid-16th century. This grandiose work, which is four and a half meters long, consists of seven compositions on the theme of Turkey. Its creation is associated with Peter Coecke van Aelst’s journey to Constantinople in 1533.

According to one assumption, these drawings were made as projects for tapestries for Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. However, during the master’s lifetime, they did not find application. Preparation for their publication in woodcut was apparently carried out by the master’s widow, the artist Maria Verhulst.

Dates: February 14 to June 2, 2024
Location: Hermitage Museum (Winter Palace, halls 324 to 328)
Address: Dvortsovaya Embankment, 34. Entrance from the Palace Square. Nearest metro station Admiralteyskaya
Ticket: 500 rubles

Also, read our article about the 10 most famous paintings from the Hermitage collection.

Photographs of engravings credit: © The State Hermitage, 2024 (© Государственный Эрмитаж, 2024, http://www.hermitagemuseum.org)