Paulus Pontius

Paulus Pontius was a prolific engraver whose collaboration with Peter Paul Rubens, Van Dyck, and other artists resulted in some of the best engravings published in seventeenth-century Flanders. He contributed more plates to Van Dyck’s Iconographie than any other printmaker. Probably made a few years after an earlier portrait, of which a largely etched state is also on view in this gallery, this completely engraved print differs not only in the more established appearance of the sitter but also in the smooth finish. Through hatching and crosshatching, Pontius, who engraved the print himself, created the gradations in tone so valued in engravings at the time, most subtly in his face and hand.