Backgammon Players
c. 1630
Medium
Engraving on ivory paper
Dimensions
Image: 25.5 × 34.4 cm (10 1/16 × 13 9/16 in.); Sheet, trimmed within platemark: 27.7 × 35.7 cm (10 15/16 × 14 1/16 in.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
21398
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Adam de Coster was a prominent painter of illuminated night scenes in Antwerp around 1630, about the same time that Lucas Emil Vorsterman was engraving works after his popular contemporaries in the same city. A student of Peter Paul Rubens, Vorsterman employed a style that was originally similar to that of the Flemish master, until a falling out with Rubens and subsequent trip to England provoked him to create stronger, more stylized, Caravaggesque engravings such as Backgammon Players. Clearly ...
About the Artist
Lucas Emil Vorsterman · 1595–1675
Lucas Vorsterman the Elder, also known as Lucas Emil Vorsterman (1595–1675), was a preeminent Flemish Baroque engraver renowned for his reproductive prints after the era's leading painters. Born in Zaltbommel in the Dutch province of Gelderland to a family of artists, his early life remains sparsely documented beyond the fact that he began practicing engraving at the age of twelve. Around 1617–161...