Title plate for the set of drawings: Varie figuræ.

The immensely prolific and talented Czech printmaker Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) was employed between 1636 and 1644 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, where this etching would have been made. The return of political stability led to Hollar's own return to London in 1652, where he lived and worked until his death.

In 1645, shortly after moving to Antwerp, Hollar produced a series of 13 etchings after Leonardo da Vinci, entitled Variae figurae et probae artem picturae incipiendae iuventuti utiles (Varied and wholesome images useful for the young person who is beginning the art of painting). This additional title page is Hollar's invention. Consisting of studies of heads, including grotesques, its relationship with the considerably larger series, 'Characters and deformities after Leonardo', as established by Hollar expert Richard Pennington and also published in 1645, has yet to be satisfactorily resolved. Hollar's charming title plate depicts a loosely draped young woman seated to right on a stone slab, looking towards the viewer with slightly open lips, holding upright on the ground a metal plate with figure studies and anot similar one on her knee. 

Te Papa also has an impression of Heads of two young women from the same series (1869-0001-222).

See:  Richard Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Works of Wenceslaus Hollar 1607-1677 (Cambridge, 1982), no. 2671, p. 399.f

Dr Mark Stocker    Curator, Historical  International Art         June 2017