CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

In February 2023, the Art Institute of Chicago purchased a collection of Dutch and Flemish prints of outstanding quality from the New York businessman Charles Hack, founder and chair of the Hearn Family Trust. The acquisition – among the largest ever made by the Prints and Drawings department at the museum – was a truly transformative addition to our holdings of old master prints, one that at once turned the Art Institute into a significant resource for the study of Netherlandish art. Numbering 1,440 sheets and ranging in date from the 1530s to around 1650, the prints in the collection chart the history of Netherlandish printmaking at the period of its greatest technical and artistic sophistication, a multifarious artistic phenomenon still imprecisely referred to by the shorthand of Dutch Mannerism.

Mr. Hack built the collection over the course of 30 years with a remarkably clear focus, an unremitting insistence on quality of impression, and a tenacious pursuit of rarities – such as experimental prints, proof states, counterproofs, and impressions on less common supports like silk, vellum, or colored papers. Such qualities made it both appropriate and desirable for any major museum, but a particularly good fit for the Art Institute. As is the case for many other American institutions, Dutch Mannerist prints – an area that we had recently identified as a priority for growth –  were historically not a collecting focus at the Art Institute. Perhaps the most eloquent measure of that relative weakness is that out of the 1,440 prints, only about 30 were already in the museum’s collection. The acquisition was nothing short of a quantum leap.

Represented by over 200 sheets, the works of Hendrick Goltzius are the largest group by any artist in the collection, and justly form its core. The Art Institute can now trace Goltzius’s entire remarkable career, from his beginnings as a rather conventional engraver in the employ of the Antwerp publishers Philips Galle and Hieronymus Cock in the late 1570s, to his early successes as a portrait engraver in the 1580s (fig. 1), to the development, as an independent professional, of his signature virtuoso style of engraving, ideally suited to the translation of the stylish work of Bartholomeus Spranger, Cornelis van Haarlem, and, increasingly, of his own distinctive designs. The Great Hercules of 1589, called “Knollenman” (fig. 2), for instance, is a technical tour de force for its bravura cutting and its large dimensions, and something of a poster child for the so-called “bulbous style” of late-sixteenth-century Mannerism.

Included in the collection is also an important group of Goltzius’s chiaroscuro woodcuts, frequently featured in rare early printings and in multiple impressions of the same composition in different colour palettes. In his constant pursuit of experimentation, Goltzius revived the chiaroscuro medium towards the end of the century to produce a series of pagan deities, a group of landscapes, and various other portraits and mythological subjects. Perhaps most notable in the group is the beautiful Mars printed on blue paper with white highlights added with brush by the artist (fig. 3). Only four other impressions on blue paper are known to survive for this relatively small-scale print.

Mr. Hack’s collecting also branched out to include any artist, publisher, or patron with whom Goltzius interacted, starting with his remarkably talented pupils. For instance, the activity of Goltzius’s step-son Jacob Matham is now amply documented in our holdings, and includes some of his most impressive works, such as the grand Table of Cebes of 1592 on three large plates after a design by Goltzius, his bold Apollo in the Clouds after Cornelis van Haarlem, and the so-called Large Procession to Calvary of 1615 after Albrecht Dürer, featured in two impressions, one on paper, and an extraordinary example on silk (fig. 4).

The acquisition also brought in a group of works by Jacques de Gheyn II, one of Goltzius’s first pupils, and one of the most fluent and talented engravers of the age. The enigmatic Fortune Teller found a ready context in a related pen-and-ink sketch of Roma people already at the Art Institute. In addition to the plates he engraved himself, de Gheyn’s reputation rests in no small part on the seductive designs engraved by Andries Stock. While very well known, the cleverly humorous and erotically suggestive Archer and the Milk-Maid and the very large Witches’ Sabbath (fig. 5) are both remarkably rare and represented in our collection in rich early impressions.

But it was, above all, Jan Harmensz Muller who achieved the height of technical brilliance and stylistic extravagance that Goltzius inspired. The almost 60 prints by Muller now in the collection (out of his total production of 100) are among the most impressive achievements of Dutch printmaking. Muller’s close engagement with the court of Rudolf II in Prague is showcased by Mercury and Psyche (fig. 6) – a dynamic depiction of a statue by Adriaen de Vries from three different angles on three large sheets. The astonishing Bellona Leading the Emperor’s Army, printed on two sheets, is a scintillating example of imperial propaganda in print during the conflict with the Ottoman Turks, while the large-scale Fortune Distributing her Gifts (fig. 7), after Cornelis van Haarlem, is the culmination of Mannerist extravagance and sophistication, parading a virtuosic command of the medium, outlandish composition, and startling eroticism, coupled with a delight in allegory and humanist learning.

The close artistic connection between the Netherlands and Prague justified another focus of the collection: prints produced in and around the court of Emperor Rudolf II. The Flemish engraver Aegidius Sadeler played a prominent role in the diffusion of Rudolfine style throughout Europe. As principal printmaker to the emperor, Sadeler made engravings after Bartholomeus Spranger, Adriaen de Vries, Hans von Aachen, and Joseph Heinz, as well as portraits of members of the court and foreign dignitaries – all well represented in the collection. Sadeler was also responsible for the then unprecedentedly large engraved portrait of Ferdinand II on Horseback, dated 1629. Competing with paintings in scale and impact, the flawless Hearn impression is a highlight, as well as one of the chronological endpoints of the collection. On the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of size and technical ambition, but much rarer, are two of the three etchings executed by Spranger himself. Their experimental nature meant that Spranger never printed them in large numbers, so it is no surprise that beautiful impressions of Saint Sebastian Bound to a Tree and St. John the Evangelist (fig. 8) are coveted and hard to come by.

The purchase of these prints does not conclude a curatorial chapter at the Art Institute. Rather, it is the beginning of a new phase of collection development. Thanks to the generous establishment by Mr. Hack of a purchase fund to be used exclusively for Netherlandish Mannerist works, the museum will continue to ambitiously acquire in this field – expanding, improving, and deepening its holdings. In just one year since finalizing the acquisition, around 30 prints of great quality have already been added to the collection.

Such a significant reshaping of the Art Institute’s collection merits commensurate celebration, and it is for that reason that we are planning an exhibition and publication to mark this major acquisition. Tentatively planned for 2027, the exhibition will showcase the variety, quality, and depth of our new Netherlandish prints – a living collection that will continue to grow for years to come. As such, the catalogue will not aspire to be a complete account of the holdings at that time, but rather a guide to their different genres, typologies, and areas of strength. We also hope that outside scholars in the field of Dutch and Flemish prints will be willing to contribute to the publication, providing an opportunity to foster new scholarship and bring together fresh perspectives on Northern Mannerism in print.

Jamie Gabbarelli is the Prince Trust Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago.

All works pictured in this article were purchased with funds provided by the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial, Amanda S. Johnson and Marion J. Livingston, anonymous, and Suzanne Searle Dixon endowment funds.