Lieven Willemsz. von Coppenol, Writing Master: The Larger Plate
c. 1658
Medium
Etching, drypoint and burin on ivory paper
Dimensions
Plate: 34.4 × 29 cm (13 9/16 × 11 7/16 in.); Sheet: 34.5 × 29.4 cm (13 5/8 × 11 5/8 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
50996
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
At the time this portrait was made, Lieven van Coppenol was in poor health, having suffered from an attack of insanity that forced him to give up his position as the head of the French school in Amsterdam and focus solely on calligraphy. Pathologically vain, the calligrapher sent demonstrations of his penmanship to poets, often under printed likenesses of himself (as seen here), in the hopes of being commissioned to transcribe their odes. In this, Rembrandt van Rijn’s largest portrait etching, V...
About the Artist
Rembrandt van Rijn · 1606–1669
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–1669) stands as one of the greatest visual artists in the history of Western art and the most important Dutch painter of the 17th century. Born in Leiden to a prosperous miller's family, Rembrandt transformed painting through his revolutionary use of light and shadow, his psychological depth in portraiture, and his elevation of etching to a fine art. His approx...