Hans Bol Landscape with the 'Sending Out of the Apostles', in a border of Flowers and Animals Pen and brown ink and wash over traces of black chalk, the outlines incised PROVENANCE LITERATURE ENGRAVED Bol made a series of twenty-four designs for prints, engraved by Adriaen Collaert and published by Edouard van Hoeswinckel. Eleven of these preparatory studies have survived, including the present one, which are remarkable for their embellishment with richly-decorated borders of flowers and animals. All bear the same date, 1584. In this case, the border includes a variety of insects, moths, a lobster, a ferret, field mice, a crab, a lion and a symetrical arrangement of cornflowers, narcissi and harebells. Bol is following a Netherlandish predilection for decorative borders, usually of animals and flowers, which perhaps derive from monastic manuscript illumination. Two years prior to our sheet he made an illuminated Book of Hours, dedicated to Francois de France, duc d'Anjou, on the occasion of the duke's entry into Antwerp and his proclamation as Duke of Brabant. He further made a three volume manuscript on vellum, Icones quorundam Animalium, dating from circa 1590, now in the Manuscript Department of the Royal Library, Copenhagen. Most of the prints in the 1584 series show biblical stories from both the Old and New Testaments, sometimes rather obscure, while the remainder appear to be purely hunting scenes or landscapes, such as here. Hans Bol began his career in his native Malines, painting watercolours on cloth, a local speciality, and where, from 1560, he was a member of the painters' guild. Very little of this early work has survived and by 1572 he was in Antwerp, where, according to his contemporary biogapher Karel Van Mander, he turned his hand to the production of miniatures in gouache. However, the preponderance of Bol’s surviving work consists of finely-wrought landscape drawings in ink and wash. In the year this drawing was made, 1584, the invasion of Spanish forces into the Southern Netherlands forced him to flee to the Dordrecht region, later moving to Delft and Amsterdam. |
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