Anna Maria A Schurman [graphic] / Joannes Livius pinxit; Jonas Snijderhoef sculpsit.

[Haarlem or Leiden], [1649].

1 item ; 35 x 25.3

This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.

Netherlands, -- publication place.

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From dealer's description: "SUYDERHOFF [or SUIJDERHOEF], Jonas after LIEVENS, Jan. Anna Maria A Schurman. [Haarlem or Leiden]: Cornelis Banheinningh [or Banheijning], [ca. 1649]. Engraving, 35 x 25.3 cm on watermarked, laid paper (Heawood 137). 1 mm margins on all sides; tiny area of loss at lower margin partly affecting the name of the publisher Banheinningh (filled in with old paper on verso). Provenance: tiny manuscript initials on verso ‘W. S.’, i.e. William Sharp, Manchester (Lugt 2650, his collection sold at Sotheby’s in 1878); tiny ink initials ‘R. P.’, i.e. Rudolf Peltzer, Cologne (Lugt 2231, his collection sold in 1914). Exceptional, darkly-inked example of this extremely rare portrait, one of just a handful of large-format, separately-issued broadsides celebrating Schurmann during her lifetime. Jonas Suijderhoef (1613-1686) engraved the present portrait based on a painting by Jan Lievens dated 1649; the BM catalogue, for example, suggests that the engraving was published very shortly thereafter. While the other comparable portrait known to us – Cornelis van Dalen’s broadside after an unfinished grisaille – attempts to incorporate some scenes of Schurmann’s upbringing within an elaborate, polished oval frame, the present engraving is rather charming in its frankness and simplicity, capturing Schurmann at what she did best: reading and writing. Numerous, generally much smaller-format engraved portraits of Schurman do exist – but all of them, as far as we have determined, belong in printed books (although often passed off in the trade as separately-issued!). Having launched herself onto the public stage in 1641 with her Latin defence of women’s education, Schurmann (1607-1678) was by 1649 at the height of her intellectual fame, having just published her celebrated Opuscula Hebraea Graeca Latina et Gallica (1648), which enjoyed a handful of re-printings. Both Lievens’ original – which is today housed in the National Gallery, London – and the Suijderhoef engraving depict Schurmann in a fur-trimmed mantle, her hair demurely tied up and set off with pearls as well as a small veil at the back, while her left hand rests on an open book. The 42-year old unmarried prodigy gazes confidently at the viewer, looking every bit the serious scholar she strived to be accepted as. However, Suijderhoef chooses to depart significantly from the painting when it comes to the contents of Schurmann’s desk. While Lievens had suggested that Schumann was writing in the pages of a blank book, Suijderhoef gets rid of the inkwell and tray, modifies the position of the hands, and instead depicts her leafing through a scholarly printed book (so designated thanks to the glosses). The size and format certainly allow that it could be a copy of her own Opusculum. Finally, beneath the engraving is a Latin inscription by Daniel Heinsius: “Work of a divine painter, heavenly image / Which a hand worthy of painting Divine images has here given us / Though he wished [to paint] them all, he was not able to paint the Muses, / he portrayed the tenth, and with the tenth, nine.” (trans. Katherine Owensby). Dating between her own small, engraved self-portrait (ca. 1633), a painted self-portrait ca. 1640, and the Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen grisaille of 1657, the present portrait is an important contribution to Schurmann’s iconography but is far rarer than the Ceulen / Dalen engraving. The Rijkmuseum and the British Museum, for example, hold only the second (as here) or third states; and we have been unable to trace any example in US institutional collections including the National Gallery of Art (which holds the Dalen engraving). The sole surviving example of the first state (before any publisher’s address) is recorded by Hollstein at Haarlem; and the third state was “reworked in face and neck”. The second state is thus desirable, and probably the earliest obtainable. “Proud of their accomplishments, the Dutch memorialized the enterprise and ingenuity of distinguished citizens in portraits. Reflective of the humanist tradition, seventeenth-century Dutch portraits affirmed the significance of the individual and, either publicly or privately, commemorated the life of the subject” (“Citizens of the Republic: Portraits from the Dutch Golden Age”, NGA exhibit including the Dalen engraving, 2012) * Hollstein, 115.II (of III, with the address of Banheinningh); van Someren, 5017; Wurzbach and Dutuit 78; Drugulin, Allgemeiner Portrait-Katalog 19032." Ordered from Editio Altera Rare Books & Manuscripts, D9690, 2023-10-23, email quote.

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