BIE, Cornelis de.
Het gulden cabinet vande edele vry schilder-const ontsloten door den lanck ghewenschten vrede tusschen de twee magtighe croonen van Spaignien en Vrancryck, waer-inne begrepen is den onsterffelijcken loff vande vermaerste constminnende geesten ende schilders van dese eeuw, hier inne meest naer hrt leven af-gebeldt, verciert met veel vermakelijcke rijmen ende spreuken.
Antwerpen, Jan Meyssens, 1662 (colophon: Juliaen van Montfort, 1661). 3 parts in 1 volume. 4to. With an engraved frontispiece by Cornelis Meyssens after Abraham van Diepenbeeck, a full-page portrait of the dedicatee Antoine van Leyen by Richard Collin (1661), a full-page portrait of the author by Jan Meyssens after Erasmus Quellinus, and 97 full-page engraved and etched portraits of painters, engravers, architects and sculptors, engraved by Jan Meyssens, Wenceslaus Hollar, and numerous others, after drawings by Anthony van Dyck, Paulus Pontanus, Jan Lievens, etc. 18th-century gold-tooled half sheep. [2], "584" [= 586], [3] pp.
€ 3,500
First and only edition of this extensive biographical work of late sixteenth and seventeenth-century painters, engravers, sculptors and architects living and working in the Southern and Northern Netherlands. The text contains biographical notes as well as many laudatory poems in Dutch (some in Latin) by many poets mainly from the Southern Netherlands. The work is divided into three parts, the first comprising painters who died in the seventeenth century with 33 portraits of Abraham Bloemaert, Adam Elsheimer, Peter Paul Rubens, Willem and Adriaan van Nieuland, Anthony van Dyck, Gerard Segers and others. The second part moves on to painters who were alive in 1662, with 42 portraits of these painters such as Daniel Segers, Adriaan de Bie (the father of Cornelis de Bie), Adriaan van de Venne, Jacob Jordaens, David Teniers Jr., Jan Meyssens. It also includes a poem on Rembrandt van Rhyn, but, curiously, there is no portrait of him, nor of other famous painters such as Nicolas Poussin, Pietro da Cortona, Francesco Albani and Govert Flinck. The last part treats architects, sculptors and engravers together with 22 portraits depicting i.a. Dirk Coornhert, Cornelis Cort, Hendrik de Keyser, Hendrick Hondius and Wenceslaus Hollar. These three parts are followed by a prayer by Cornelis de Bie, laudatory poems by Theodoor van Kessel and Gerard Wolsschatius. See for a very extensive description, mentioning all the artists and portraits, the Biblioteca Belgica.
With 2 dated 19th-century (1801 and 1810) German ownership annotations, and an armorial bookplate on the first free flyleaf, remnants of two bookplates on the front pastedown. The edges and corners of the boards are scuffed, the front joint is somewhat weakened. The leaves are slightly browned, the head margin has been cut somewhat short, but without loss of text, occasional annotations in the margins. Otherwise in good condition. Bibl. Belg. 1, pp. 442-7; Ter Laan, pp 49; STCN 31547047X; STCV 3154579; USTC 1842678.
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