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Overview
Wenceslaus (or Wenzel) Hollar (1607-77) was an Anglo-Czech artist, and one of the greatest and most prolific printmakers of the 17th century. His art reveals his immensely wide subject range, and reflects the priorities of his time: religion, mythology, satire, landscapes, geography and maps, portraits, women, costumes, sports, natural history, architecture, heraldry, numismatics, ornaments, title-pages and initials.
Between 1636 and 1644 Hollar was employed as an artist and cataloguer in the household of Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, one of the greatest art collectors of his era. The Earl, a victim of the English Civil War, fled overseas and died in 1646; Hollar himself moved with his family to Antwerp in 1644. The return of political stability led to Hollar's own return to London in 1652, where he lived and worked until his death.
This portrait dates from Hollar's period in Antwerp. It depicts the local etcher and publisher Frans van den Wyngaerde (1614-69), who strikes a gentlemanly pose similar to that seen in artists from Titian to Van Dyck. The background depicts the city in the distance. The Latin word 'chalcographus', added beneath the title in this second state, means both engraver on copper and printer.
See:
http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/tag/wenceslaus-hollar/
Richard Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Wenceslaus Hollar 1607-1677 (Cambridge, 1982), p. 267 (no. 1527).
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art June 2017