‘So little money for so much work’: A frontispiece of Jean Taffin by Jan van de Velde II

Abstract

This study examines documentary evidence in the form of personal letters concerning the commission of a frontispiece from the then apprentice printmaker Jan van de Velde II (1593-1641) for a 1613 edition of Jean Taffin’s best-selling Boetverdicheit des levens (‘Treatise on the amendment of life’). The previously unpublished frontispiece is identified here for the first time, and it now stands as the earliest known work by the artist. The study also elucidates the highly placed network of Remonstrant reformers discussed in the letters, and their frustrated efforts to track down a likeness of the deceased author, who had been the personal chaplain to William the Silent. Finally, it argues that the limited financial outcome of the commission had a formative impact, as the letters themselves suggest, on Van de Velde’s decision to pursue a career primarily working from his own designs, a bold direction for a printmaker of the day.