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Lot Essay
This is the largest portrait etching Rembrandt ever made, offered here in a very fine impression in beautiful condition. It is very likely that the sitter, the calligrapher Lieven van Coppenol, commissioned the print and requested it in a highly finished style, for the purpose of inscribing the prints with his elaborate handwriting and sending them prospective clients. The large blank sheet held by the sitter, may have offered space for a small dedication or address, and indeed the present example shows remnants of a faded inscription in this area. To have more space for handwriting, Coppenol had the portrait printed on half-sheets of Imperial paper (550 x 360 mm.), with the plate (335 x 281 mm) positioned just a few centimetres below the top edge, as Erik Hinterding has found, thus leaving a large blank area below. Some of these annotated impressions survive to this day. (Hinterding, 2008, p. 516-517)
Nicholas Stogdon sums up the man as follows:
‘Lieven van Coppenol (1598-after 1667), was clearly a very peculiar man. Rembrandt's genius, perhaps in this case a somewhat vengeful one, is to tell us a lot about the sitter without denting his vanity. Though fair, he must have had what might politely be described as an expensive complexion, and he was obviously quite ample. All the evidence is that he was an obsessive, thick-skinned and self-absorbed, and he looks it. He had had to retire from his profession as schoolmaster because of mental instability, and it was partly his two marriages to moneyed women that allowed him to indulge his passion for calligraphy. Not shy of thrusting himself forward, he had a fine and perpetuating method of self-promotion. He would send examples of his craft to any famous figure whom he thought would benefit him…He was surprisingly successful, perhaps because to comply was the only way to get rid of him.’ (Stogdon, 2011, p. 226-7)
Nicholas Stogdon sums up the man as follows:
‘Lieven van Coppenol (1598-after 1667), was clearly a very peculiar man. Rembrandt's genius, perhaps in this case a somewhat vengeful one, is to tell us a lot about the sitter without denting his vanity. Though fair, he must have had what might politely be described as an expensive complexion, and he was obviously quite ample. All the evidence is that he was an obsessive, thick-skinned and self-absorbed, and he looks it. He had had to retire from his profession as schoolmaster because of mental instability, and it was partly his two marriages to moneyed women that allowed him to indulge his passion for calligraphy. Not shy of thrusting himself forward, he had a fine and perpetuating method of self-promotion. He would send examples of his craft to any famous figure whom he thought would benefit him…He was surprisingly successful, perhaps because to comply was the only way to get rid of him.’ (Stogdon, 2011, p. 226-7)