Minneapolis Institute of Art

Album of landscape etchings

Jan van de Velde; Publisher: Claes Janz. Visscher II

Date

1616 and later

Medium

Bound book of 59 etchings

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Jan van de Velde played a central role in the development of the Dutch landscape. With some 200 etchings, he consolidated and broadcast the Dutch nationalistic view of Holland as a new Eden, a garden of peace and plenty. He found endless variation in the seemingly monotonous flat terrain. Canals, rivers, and the sea broke the plane, as did country roads, clumps of windblown trees, farmhouses, roadside inns, fortifications, and ruinous castles. The activities of herdsmen, travelers, monks, fishermen, picnickers, and ice skaters animate his views. He advertised his scenes as having been drawn from life, but that is true only of their elements. He must have filled sketchbooks with studies of the region around Haarlem. He also studied prints of Roman architecture and ruins. He then selected elements from these resources, combining them into highly structured, fictional but plausible compositions. The present album contains nearly three dozen of these quiet scenes, which he called Ameissimae Aliquot Regiunculae [Some of the most beautiful regions], most first published in the town of Haarlem in 1616. Netherlands, Europe

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