Engraving the Mirrors of
Princes:A Jan Sadeler in Munich
Dorothy
Limouze, St. Lawrence UniversityA
Jan I Sadeler (1550-1600)
forged a remarkable career, breaking through guild
barriers to change his family's profession from weapons
ornamentation to printmaking; rising (even as a newcomer
to Antwerp) through the ranks of the latter trade,
so that he came to outprice and even outclass his
peers. Sadeler maintained his shop and reputation
through periods of political, religious, and economic
instability in Antwerp, and he emigrated not once,
but twice, from Antwerp, when circumstances demanded
it A? in both cases sustaining and even strengthening
his family business. Well before his cousin Aegidius
came to the notice of Emperor Rudolf II, he secured
an invitation to the court of Wilhelm V of Bavaria,
leaving Frankfurt, where he and his brother Raphael
had a fledgling business, for Munich. Moving to Munich
with his cousin, Aegidius II Sadeler (1568-1628),
Jan abandoned the company of religious and political
refugees for a comfortable post at an orthodox Catholic
court.A A
The Sadelers' ability
to flourish in disparate environments is reflected
in the diverse makeup of their prints. Those made
in Munich from 1590 to 1595 show particular ingenuity.
Departures from the subjects engraved in Frankfurt,
they fit together in a program of princely glorification
with references to the religious, political and cultural
strategies of the Wittelsbachs. A striking leitmotif
in Munich prints by Jan and his cousin Aegidius is
the theme of princely virtue, an embodiment of the
Catholic Humanist principles on which both Wilhelm
V and Maximilian were educated. Panofsky first identified
the connection between Jan's notable Choice of
Hercules (after Friedrich Sustris) and the young
Maximilian, and Thea Vignau Wilberg and I have interpreted
as allegories of Erziehung Aegidius's well
known trio of Hermathena, Occasio and Praemium, made in collaboration with Joris Hoefnagel and
Hans von Aachen. Aegidius Sadeler's noted engraving
after Hans von Aachen's design, of Minerva Leading
Pictura to the Circle of the Liberal Arts, was
also engraved in Munich and dedicated to Maximilian.
Nonetheless, there is a tendency to see these prints
of humanist character as anomalies among the broader
artistic enterprise at the Munich court, with its
dominant Jesuit presence in the 1580's and 1590's.
The engraving of Minerva Leading Pictura is,
in fact, generally connected with the tolerant and
learned court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague.
This talk seeks to
reinforce the connections between these engraved allegories
of princely virtue and the program of education of
the young Maximilian, designed by Wilhelm V with the
help of Jesuit advisors and Jesuit educated scholars.
Evidence for this interpretation comes from Maximilian's
early involvement in classically-based Jesuit dramas;
his exposure to Aristotle, Horace, Cicero and other
Greek and Latin writersA through Petraeus, Fickler,
and other mentors; and the mythological topoi found
in laudatory texts written for the dedication of the
Jesuit Michaelskirche.
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