8. Adriaen Collaert (ca. 1560-1618)
after Hendrik Van Cleve (1525-1589)

Italian Landscape with a Ruined Bridge

(click on image to print)
Collaert, Italian Landscape

Italian Landscape with a Ruined Bridge

Engraving from Regionum, Rurium…Prospectus, 186 x 243 mm., Hollstein 45 (Cleve), Hollstein 539 (Collaert). Fine, clear impression on laid paper with small margins; flattened printer’s crease, pale foxing at the edges, the sheet a bit over-cleaned and white. Van Cleve (or Cleef) was born and died in Antwerp, but as a young man he went to Italy, returning home in 1551, an accomplished painter of landscapes. Not all those landscapes, however, represented actual places and a good deal of imaginative inventiveness went into many of them. He often showed what a northerner would want Italy to look like, rather than what it did. Collaert, as an engraver, was a total professional, as his output of over 700 prints testifies.