RKD STUDIES

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, copper plates were in high demand in Antwerp’s visual arts sector. Traditionally used for engravings, etchings, and book illustrations, copper plates were widely available and readily accessible to artists and publishers. From the second half of the sixteenth century onwards, Flemish painters increasingly adopted copper as a painting support, following developments in Italy.¹ The support became especially popular among artists such as Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625) and Frans Francken II (1581-1642), who valued their exceptionally smooth surface for its capacity to support meticulous detail and luminous colour effects. Copper paintings also featured prominently in luxury interiors: lavishly decorated Antwerp cabinets were often fitted with small copper paintings mounted on doors and drawers [1]. At the same time, Antwerp art dealers active in the international export market favoured copper supports over panel or canvas because of their durability and ease of transport. Dealers such as Crisostomo Van Immerseel (1588-1654), Matthijs Musson (1598-1678), and Guilliam Forchondt (1608-1678) acquired copper plates in large quantities and distributed them among painters’ workshops to fulfil export commissions.² Interestingly, the use of copper supports never gained a similarly strong foothold in the Northern Netherlands.

Copper was mined in present-day Hungary, the area around Nuremberg, the Harz-Mountains, and Sweden.³ The copper sheets that arrived in Antwerp were in a semi-finished state. Local coppersmiths hammered these sheets into evenly flattened supports suitable for painting or printmaking.⁴ Copper plates intended for printmaking were generally thicker and more highly polished, as they had to withstand repeated passes through the rolling press and required a smooth surface, with ink retained only in the engraved or etched lines. Copper plates intended for painting, by contrast, were generally thinner and required a rougher surface to ensure good adhesion of the ground layer.⁵ Occasionally, however, printing plates were reused as painting supports. A notable example is the reverse of Rembrandt’s etching plate of Abraham entertaining the three angels (Genesis 18:8-9) (1656), which was later used by an artist in the circle of Peeter Gijsels (1621-1690/91) for a River landscape with villages and travelers.⁶

In Antwerp, copper workers belonged to the Guild of Saint Eligius (Sint-Elooi), together with other blacksmithing and forging professions. Within this guild, brass casters (geelgieters) specialised in cast objects such as chandeliers, lecterns and candlesticks, while coppersmiths (koperslagers) processed metal sheets, using fire, scissors, saw and hammer, into mainly hammered copper wares like kettles, pipes and pots, but also copper plates for painters and printmakers. In 1602, 25 master coppersmiths were active in Antwerp, but most of these would have produced household goods.⁷

The Guild of Saint Eligius regulated training, mastership, production and selling rights, and from the later sixteenth century increasingly sought to supervise the quality and identification of metal products. Unlike the Guild of Saint Luke, whose regulations included marking standards for panel production, no archival sources survive concerning the systematic marking of copper plates intended for artistic use. In general, it seems that the products of Antwerp coppersmiths were not marked.⁸ One exception occurred in 1584, when the coppersmiths protested against the five percent export tax on wares sent to Holland and Zeeland. The Antwerp city council subsequently abolished the tax on the condition that exported goods would bear a specific mark, probably the Antwerp hand commonly used by other crafts.⁹ This regulation appears to have been temporary and to have applied primarily to kettles and other copperware rather than to copper plates used in the arts.

Nevertheless, several marks on artistic copper plates are known. Regulations concerning quality control and makers’ marks for brass casters were introduced in 1602, particularly in response to concerns about excessive lead content in brass alloys.¹⁰ That year, the coppersmiths requested that the Guild of Saint Eligius oblige brass casters to mark their products with their initials so that substandard alloys could be traced back to individual makers. These wares were to be inspected by the guild officers, and offending craftsmen could be fined. That the plea was accepted is suggested by several recorded marks by brass casters, often in combination with the Antwerp hand.¹¹

A small number of coppersmiths appear to have adopted similar practices, even without the specific regulations to do so. Most notable among them is Peeter Stas (c. 1565-after 1616), by whom almost hundred impressions are preserved on both copper painting supports and printing plates [2-3]. Of the seven coppersmiths’ marks currently known (see Appendix 2), Stas is the only one whose mark has been recorded in combination with the Antwerp hand, on approximately half of the surviving plates.¹² The Antwerp hand is found stamped either above or below Stas’s personal mark, also after he incorporated a hand into his redesigned punch in 1606. On five plates, the letters ‘W/GB’ are hammered along the long edge of the plate. These letters have so far only been recorded on plates bearing Stas’s mark. Based on these associations, it may be suggested that Stas himself applied the Antwerp hand, while the letter ‘W/GB’ may tentatively be attributed to an assay master of the Guild of Saint Eligius.

Most copper plates, however, do not bear any marks. Further archival research is needed to understand the significance and function of those that do. It is possible that some were applied on the initiative of the coppersmiths themselves to signal identity and quality, much as panel makers did before the introduction of the official regulations of 1617. Evidence that such marks could have functioned as indicators of quality for collectors may be found in Hieronymus Francken’s Cabinet of the Connoisseur (after 1615), in which a seated man examines a small painting on copper whose reverse bears a circular mark related in design to the ‘GK’ mark [4-5].

1
Anonymous Southern Netherlands (hist. region) after 1635 or Victor Wolfvoet (II) and studio of Victor Wolfvoet (II) after Peter Paul Rubens
Painted cabinet, after 1635
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. BK-NM-11906-1

2
Mark by Peeter Stas

3
Mark by Peeter Stas

4 A man examining a painting on copper, with a circular mark on its reverse, detail of Cabinet of the Connoisseur (after 1615)

5
Mark ‘GK’