8. Jan van de Velde II
(1593-1641)
Interior of the Ruins of a Large Chateau

(click on image to print)
van de Velde II , Interior of the Ruins

Interior of the Ruins of a Large Chateau

Etching, 1615, from a set of 18 Landscapes and Ruins, Franken & Van der Kellen 226 ii/ii, Hollstein 187 ii/ii, 117 x 312 mm. A fine, black impression on laid paper trimmed unevenly along (in places, within) the borderline; in the upper right corner, a repaired tear, some paper crinkling and the very tip of the corner lost. This somewhat (for Van de Velde) phantasmagoric image, with ruins circling an old, dying tree, plays not only on the idea of memory, but on that of transience, a not uncommon subject in 17th-century landscape art (the paintings of Ruisdael, for example). Van de Velde’s elegant hunters (with their high hats and dogs) attend the scene, as does a worker carrying a load and a seated couple by a ruined wall. All that is lacking is a carved inscription of Et in Arcadia Ego – but then, this is Holland not Italy. The first state of the print is theoretical as no impression is currently known.