Landscape with Roman Ruins
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Catalogue Number:
43
Artist:
Ploos Van Amstel (1726-1798)
Title:
Landscape with Roman Ruins
Work Type:
Printdrawing
Date:
18th Century
Culture:
Dutch
Medium:
Print drawing with brown ink on laid paper, pasted on old mount
Dimensions:
8 7/8 X 10 1/2 in.
Inscriptions & Annotations:
Drawing inscribed J. Lievens (ink); Mount inscribed Jan Lievens – Dutch 17th C. 1607-1663 / J. Lievens (graphite); Verso: Annotated 43 (graphite)
Condition:
Clean, intact, stable
Credit Line:
Cornell College, Gift of Robert Sonnenschein II
Accession Year:
1951
Object Number:
1951.43
Commentary:
This is a printdrawing by Cornelis Ploos van Amstel after Jan Lievens, and a part of Ploos van Amstel’s Ectypa series. Printdrawing refers to a method of printing that replicates the appearance of drawings. Ploos van Amstel’s method specifically involved tracing an existing drawing, reversing it, and using the reversed image with fine copper filings on the back to press it into a copper plate to transfer the design. For drawings with more tone variation, one method was to evenly pressed the filings onto the plate before tracing it to engrave the drawing, and polishing out the highlights to create a range of tones, though it is thought that he may have also used techniques resembling mezzotint and possibly aquatint as well (Bye).
In Ploos van Amstel’s lifetime, he and his assistants produced 46 plates in this style, the prints of which were distributed in multiple editions to subscribers. Following his death, Christian Josi published a set of 104 printdrawings in 1821 that included the 46 previous plates, as well as 65 new ones. The British Museum’s collection includes another print of the same design. KF
Arthur Edwin Bye, The Print Collector’s Quarterly 13, no. 4 (1926): 305-321.