Meet Magdalena de Passe, Engraver Extraordinaire

Here my eye has seen, and my soul has found it hard
To believe my eye, because a Magdalena
Has shown with her delicate hand that bronze
Yielded to the daring lines of her skilled burin.

– Crispijn de Passe the Younger (1638)¹

A child prodigy born to an artistic family, Magdalena de Passe (1600-1638) went on to develop an international reputation for her inventive adaptations of well-known compositions done in a distinctively refined and fluid style. In addition to her artistic accomplishments, she was a mentor, caretaker, and ambitious entrepreneur who even secured patents in her own name.

Engraved around 1620 after compositions by the artists Paul Bril and Adam Willaerts, the landscape prints acquired by the Museum are rare full-sheet early impressions, meaning they are among the first pulled from the plate and were never cut down. All three are prominently inscribed “Magdaleena de pas fecit” [Magdalena made this].

Biography

Magdalena was born in Cologne to Magdalena de Bock, a formidable woman who bore at least five children and lived to 80 years old, and Crispijn de Passe the Elder (1564-1637), a celebrated printmaker, draughtsman, and print publisher. The Mennonite couple met in Antwerp and moved to Cologne in 1589 in search of economic opportunity and to escape religious persecution.² They started a family and enjoyed economic success, until yet another wave of anti-Mennonite persecutions forced them to flee and eventually settle in Utrecht, when Magdalena was eleven.

In the Netherlands, Magdalena assisted her father in the workshop alongside her three older brothers, Crispijn the Younger (1594-1670), Simon (1595-1647), and Willem (1597/1598-1636/1637). She signed her first print at 14 years old, two years before her brothers did, and in a dictionary of artists dated about 1670, the brothers are simply listed by name, while Magdalena is described as a “skilled and well-known engraver.”³ An unmarried woman, she remained bound to her father’s workshop while her brothers travelled internationally to expand the family business into Paris, London, and Copenhagen.

Over the years, Magdalena excelled across genres and gained special recognition for her allegories and landscapes. Especially notable works include her exquisite suite of prints for a publication of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, praised by her brother Crispijn in the poem cited above, and her virtuosic The Death of Procris, an homage to Peter Paul Rubens, whom she greatly admired and may have known personally.

Around 1620, she began to specialize in landscape, a burgeoning genre with significant market appeal. Indeed, an inventory from 1653 shows that within a few decades, the value of her landscapes had risen 900%.⁴ The three present works emblematize the de Passe workshop’s strategic shift towards landscape and Magdalena’s bold approach to ecological subject matter.

Collecting history

While it is unclear whether the three MMFA prints were intended as a series, they share many similarities that suggest they were at the very least created and sold as a group. They are all landscapes with the same format, scale, and inscription style. Furthermore, the identical binding holes along the left-hand margin indicate that they were almost certainly collected and bound together.

Given the French privilege on each of the three prints – “comprevelege du Roy treschretien” [(printed) with the privilege of the most Christian King] – it is likely that they were made for Crispijn’s clients in Paris, where he had recently set up shop and where there was significant demand for Dutch prints. Works by Magdalena are documented in the extensive collection of the French clergyman and polymath Michel de Marolles, which was sold to Louis XIV in 1667.⁵ It is probable that versions of the present prints were part of that royal collection, as only two other Magdalena works bear the French privilege.

Magdalena’s legacy

This artist’s excellence and ambition transcended her father’s workshop. After experimenting with the challenging technique of copper plate printing on fabric, in 1630, she appeared before the States General to request a patent for a novel product: the printed sleeping cap.⁶ These fashion items, intended for men to wear in the home, bore popular images such as famous battles across the Dutch Empire and political figures like the King of Sweden, who was celebrated as a champion of Protestantism.⁷ Magdalena, whose professional network extended to the Protestant communities of Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, would have been keenly aware of her product’s international market potential.