Imitation and Innovation in Materials in Early Modern Northern European Art: Pen Prints, Pen Drawings, and Pen Paintings, ca. 1580-1670

This dissertation explores the phenomenon of pen imitation traceable from the late sixteenth to the late seventeenth century first in the Southern and subsequently in the Northern Netherlands. Over two dozen artists working in print, drawing, and painting, challenged the boundaries between these media by means of their highly illusionistic manual factures. Chapter 1 examines how, during the latter half of the sixteenth century, specialized engravers began to reproduce virtuosic calligraphic handwriting in print, resulting in works of high similitude in like manner to facsimiles. Conversely, draftsmen working in pen and ink imitated or alluded in varying degrees to different print techniques in meticulously finished stand-alone works. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 address various modes of pen handling that provide a spectrum of referentiality to print. After Jan Wierix began to imitate the delicate linear style of his family's print shop in Flanders, this practice was adopted and refined in the Northern Netherlands by the great printmaker Hendrick Golztius and his followers. By the middle of the seventeenth century, draftsmen like Gerrit and Willem de Heer continued working in this tradition of pen imitation but also adopted certain pictorial strategies from contemporary painting. Chapter 5 details how around 1650, imitative pen drawing was translated to panel and canvas, resulting in pen paintings in the marine genre. This dissertation is the first scholarly study to consider calligraphic prints, print-like pen drawings, and pen paintings together and in depth, and to argue that these were part of a related, innovative phenomenon of pen imitation traceable over the course of a century in the North. The thesis adds to the current Goltzius-centered literature on imitative pen drawings by showing that many lesser-known artists engaged in comparable practices, thereby revealing that this phenomenon was more widespread and versatile than previously assessed. More broadly, the study seeks to expand our understanding of artworks from this period as products of a single, identifiable medium. Collectively, the objects considered reveal that the boundaries between media were purposefully kept fluid and that a single artwork could encompass or evoke several material practices.