Emblem Drawing ("Hope sustains me")
early 17th century
Medium
Pen and brown ink, brush and blue-gray ink; double framing line in pen and brown ink, by the artist; framing line in pen and brown ink, by a later hand
Dimensions
Sheet: 5 × 6 1/2 in. (12.7 × 16.5 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Brooke Russell Astor Bequest, 2013
Accession Number
2013.177
Tags
Art Historical Context
This delicate emblem drawing, titled *Hope Sustains Me*, is a collaborative work by Dutch artists Jacob Matham and Karel Mander I from the early 17th century. Matham, a skilled engraver known for his reproductive prints, and van Mander, a painter-poet famed for his influential *Het Schilder-Boeck—a compendium of artist biographies and emblematic ideas—likely created this as a preparatory design for printmaking or an emblem book. Rendered in pen and brown ink with subtle brush touches of blue-gray ink, the sheet measures a modest 5 × 6½ inches, featuring symbolic motifs like buildings, boats, b...
About the Artist
Jacob Matham|Karel van Mander I · 1571–1631
**Jacob Matham: Master Engraver of Haarlem** Jacob Matham was born on October 15, 1571, in Haarlem, in the Northern Netherlands, into a burgeoning artistic milieu. Following his father's early death, his mother married the renowned painter and engraver Hendrick Goltzius in 1579, who adopted the young Jacob and trained him rigorously in the workshop as his stepson and pupil. Matham's first signed ...