Michael Sweerts

The very rare, complete set of  title and twelve plates, etchings, 1656, fine, early impressions, printed with plate tone, all trimmed on the borderline or slightly within at right, otherwise in good condition, bound together with other seventeenth century prints, including works by Cornelis de Wael, after Callot and others, contemporary calf paneled in blind, blind floral corner pieces, spine in five compartments, endpapers and edges plain; worn, upper joint splitting

Ex coll. Richard Dennett and Anna Butterfield (according to ink inscriptions on the title page)

The inscription in Latin on the frontfree endpaper translates: Franciscus Pole, formerly an alumnus of the Laughton School, justly owns this book with engravings in the year 1698.

Like most of Sweerts’s prints and paintings, these little etchings are both strange and haunting.  His sensitive line and dramatic lighting create a presence that far exceeds their diminutive size. 

The title of the set has been translated as ‘Diverse faces for use by the young and others,’ (see Ger Luijten, ‘For the Young and Others’:  the Prints of Michael Sweerts, in Michael Sweerts [1618-1664]¸ exhib. cat. Amsterdam, San Francisco and Hartford, 2002, p. 167), clearly suggests a didactic function.  And, indeed, the work was published in 1656, the year Sweerts set up his studio in Brussels. 

The specific purpose of the volume is, however, extremely puzzling.  Earlier scholars suggested that they they might have been used in a Drawing Book, like the one designed by Abraham Bloemaert.  However, Luijten (Op. cit., p. 176) is surely correct in saying that they are more in the tradition of tronies, that compromise between a portrait and a character piece, made famous by Rembrandt and Lievens.  The etchings were apparently used as models for younger artists, for the prints are exceptionally rare.  Until the appearance of this volume, there was only one complete set of the Diversae Facies known, the one in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.  The present set is extremely fresh and well-preserved, no doubt owing to the fact that they were bound together since at least 1698.