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Crispijn de Passe the Elder (1564-1637)

Crispijn de Passe the Elder (1564-1637)
 
Dutch publisher and engraver and founder of a dynasty of engravers. As with the other dynasties, their style is very similar, and hard to tell apart in the absence of a signature or date, or evidence of location. Many of the family could produce their own designs, and have left drawings.
 
Crispijn van de Passe I was born in Arnemuiden in Zeeland, and trained and worked in Antwerp, then the centre of the printmaking world, with hugely productive workshops producing work for publishers with excellent distribution arrangements throughout Europe. By 1585 he was a member of the artists' Guild of Saint Luke, and doing work for Christopher Plantin. Much of this was work engraving the paintings of Martin de Vos, whose wife's niece Magdalena de Bock Crispijn married. The disruptions of the Dutch Revolt scattered these artists across Northern Europe; de Passe was an Anabaptist, which made his position especially difficult. He first moved to Aachen, until Protestants were also expelled from there. He started his own engraving and publishing business in Cologne in 1589, but again was forced to leave in 1611. He set up in business in Utrecht, by about 1612, where he created engravings for the English and other markets, and where he died in 1637. 

Four of Crispijn I's children were also notable engravers for the family business, His eldest son, Simon de Passe (c. 1595-6 May 1647) worked in England from about 1616 before moving to Copenhagen as royal engraver and designer of medals in 1624, where he remained until his death. He is best remembered for his early London print of Pocahontas (1616). Crispijn II (ca. 1597-1670) worked in Paris, at least from 1617 to 1627, in Utrecht (1630–1639), and from then until his death in Amsterdam; his work on the "Maneige royal" ("Instructions to the king on how to ride a horse") of Antoine de Pluvinel is considered by Hind the finest work of the dynasty.Magdalena van de Passe (1600–1638) born in Cologne and died in Utrecht specialized in landscapes until her marriage to the minor artist Frederick van Bevervoorden in 1634, after which she essentially stopped engraving, even though her husband died in 1636

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