Winter landscape with skaters before Mechelen – Egidius Sadeler, 1620

“Hyems” copper engraving made in Prague in 1620, by Egidius the younger and Marco Sadeler after the design by Pieter Stevens. From a series of four seasons. Coloured by a later hand. Size: approx. 23 x 32.7 cm.

Winter landscape with skaters near Mechelen. In the foreground men are working. Wood is being chopped, tree stumps are sawn and are carried away as firewood in large baskets and the ice of the frozen river is sawn into blocks. But there is also time for pleasure. People are playing colf, children throw snowballs, an other kid is playing with a toll, and there are numerous skaters on the ice.

The Sadeler family was the largest and perhaps most successful family dynasty of Flemish engravers. They were dominant as printmakers on the Northern European market in the late 16th and 17th centuries. As with artist families such as Wierix and Van der Passe, the work of the members of one family is very similar. At least ten Sadelers worked as engravers in the southern Netherlands, Germany, Bohemia and Austria.

Literature: Wurzbach „Niederländisches Künstler Lexikon“, Egidius Sadeler nr. 94

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