Some Flemish Popular Prints from Hieronymus Cock and His Contemporaries

Abstract

With the establishment of his shop, the Quatre Vents, around 1550, Hieronymus Cock soon made Antwerp one of the most important print-publishing centers of the period. The engravings and etching issues by Cock and other entrepreneurs were intended to appeal to a broad and varied public. Besides the familiar range from religious and mythological scenes to portraits, landscapes, and topographical views,1 a number of prints were also devoted to humorous and often didactic subjects, inspired by the proverbs, folklore, and popular literature of the sixteenth-century Netherlands. The best known of these prints have been extensively studied: the compositions influenced by Hieronymus Bosch, the etchings of Frans Hogenberg, and, above all, the many designs produced by Pieter Bruegel the Elder for Hieronymus Cock, such as the Big Fish Eat the Little Fish, Everyman (Elck), and the Alchemist.2 There are other prints, however, mostly after anonymous artists, which have with few exceptions been largely ignored. They des...