Antwerpen, Adriaen van Berghen, 1509

Abstract

Adriaen van Berghen was active as a printer from 1500 until about 1540, first at Antwerp, after 1536 at various places in the northern Netherlands. The works which he published were for the most part of a religious nature: from 1522 onwards his reformed and more particularly Lutheran inclinations become increasingly evident. On account of his convictions he found himself in trouble with the courts on more than one occasion; and it was for the same reason that he was banished from Antwerp in 1536 and six years later condemned to death and beheaded. He was a close friend of Henrick Eckert van Homberch — after whose death, incidentally, he became guardian to Van Homberch’s children — and it looks as though they occasionally collaborated on jobs; it is certain that on more than one occasion they exchanged woodcuts. In 1509 both men published editions of Der zielen troost, and the two editions are very similar in many respects. That by Adriaen van Berghen distinguishes itself by, among other things, a beautiful woodcut on the title-page, the work of an unknown but talented artist: God looks down from Heaven onto the Virgin and Christ, who, surrounded by pious women and men, are giving of their milk and blood which is caught by an angel and poured out again for the comfort of the souls in purgatory.