The Influence of Dutch Genre Painting in Emblematic Prints: Jan Luyken’s Des Menschen, Begin, Midden en Einde (1712)

Abstract

This paper examines Dutch printmaker Jan Luyken’s visual strategy represented in his emblem book, Des Menschen Begin, Midden en Einde (1712). As a poet as well as a printmaker, Luyken wrote a poem in this book and produced image prints by himself. Jan Luyken has long been omitted from surveys of Dutch art due to the absence of archival evidence about his life and works. The themes that Luyken employed in his prints, such as parents’ virtue, mother and child, and children’s play, and his genre style, including doorsien, are all examples of contemporary pictorial devices of genre painting prevalent in Luyken’s time. An analysis of the similarities between Des Menschen Begin, Midden en Einde and contemporary genre paintings demonstrates that Luyken’s prints coincided with the development of Dutch Golden Age art. Luyken consciously employed a strategy of incorporating trendy interior items and idealized figures to make his pieces more attractive to his contemporaneous buyers. This is contrary to evaluations of him as an outdated artist indifferent to the contemporary art world.