A passion for prints: Netherlandish engravings in an early sixteenth-century prayer book

Abstract

• An extraordinary prayer book manuscript dated c. 1530, recently acquired by the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), shows that printed images became recognized as a collectible category of art much earlier than is commonly understood. The manuscript includes 16 masterfully hand-coloured engravings by Netherlandish printmakers, including Lucas van Leyden’s 12-print series, the Engraved Passion (1521). The pasted-in prints are interwoven with prayers about the Passion in the vernacular Dutch. The close relationship between devotional text and printed image sheds light on the function and use value of devotional prints. Through assembly and alteration, Lucas’s Passion series takes on new meaning, seen most prominently in the addition of red paint for blood and gold leaf. Beyond the devotional function of the manuscript, the selection and assembly of prints in the manuscript offers valuable evidence of the reception of prints in this early period. Lucas’s series is combined with prints by lesser-known northern printmakers Frans Crabbe (Mechelen, c. 1480-1553), Master S (active in Antwerp, active c. 1520), and Jacob Binck (Cologne, 1495 – present-day Kaliningrad, 1569). This inclusion, I argue, indexes a growing interest in regional print production. I situate the engravings, together with the vernacular text, within a new regional market for luxury goods, located in or near Antwerp, the cultural capital of the southern Netherlands. Set within this new market and emergent collecting culture, I consider the individual prints in the manuscript, and also how they were assembled, altered, and viewed.