Andreas c. 1640 - 1680

Cornelis van Caukercken made this engraving of Andreas, likely in the mid-17th century, after a painting by Anthony van Dyck. The print was produced in the Netherlands, a place undergoing significant religious and political change at the time, and grappling with questions of how art should function in public life. Note the prominence given to the name of van Dyck, the celebrated painter: his authorship is given more emphasis than that of the printmaker Caukercken, whose name appears in a smaller font. The print thus served to enhance van Dyck’s reputation by disseminating his imagery to a wider audience. The proliferation of printed images allowed the visual vocabulary of the master artist to spread rapidly, exerting a tremendous influence on popular taste and on the work of less well-known artists, like Caukercken. Such prints offer us a valuable resource to reconstruct the visual culture of the period and to understand the making of artistic reputations.