Wenceslas Hollar
| Wenceslaus Hollar | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Wenceslaus Hollar by Jan Meyssens (Prague Castle in background).
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| Born |
Václav Hollar 13 July 1607 Prague, Kingdom of Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic) |
| Died | 25 March 1677 (aged 69) London, Kingdom of England (present-day United Kingdom) |
| Nationality | Czech |
| Known for | Etching |
| Movement | Baroque |
Václav Hollar (Czech: [ˈvaːtslav ˈɦolar]; 13 July 1607 – 25 March 1677), was a Czech etcher from Kingdom of Bohemia, known in England as Wenceslaus or Wenceslas and in Germany as Wenzel Hollar. He was born in Prague, and died in London, being buried at St Margaret's Church, Westminster.
After his family was ruined by the Sack of Prague in the Thirty Years' War, the young Hollar, who had been destined for the law, determined to become an artist. The earliest of his works that have come down to us are dated 1625 and 1626; they are small plates, and one of them is a copy of a "Virgin and Child" by Dürer, whose influence upon Hollar's work was always great. In 1627 he was in Frankfurt where he was apprenticed to the renowned engraver Matthäus Merian. In 1630 he lived in Strasbourg, Mainz and Koblenz, where Hollar portrayed the towns, castles, and landscapes of the Middle Rhine Valley. In 1633 he moved to Cologne.
It was in 1636 that he attracted the notice of the famous nobleman and art collector Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, then on an embassy to the imperial court of Emperor Ferdinand II. Employed as a draftsman he travelled with Arundel to Vienna and Prague. In Cologne in 1635, Hollar published his first book. In 1637 he returned with him to England where he remained in the Earl's household for many years.
Though he became a servant of Lord Arundel, he seems not to have worked exclusively for him, and after the Earl's death in Padua in 1646, earned his living by working for various authors and publishers, which was afterwards his primary means of distribution. In around 1650, probably at the request of Hendrik van der Borcht, he etched a commemorative print done after a design by Cornelius Schut in Arundel's honour and dedicated to his widow, Aletheia. Arundel is seated in melancholy mode on his tomb in front of an obelisk (perhaps commemorating the one he tried to import from Rome), and surrounded by works of art and their personifications.
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