Attributed to Paulus PONTIUS
Antwerp 1603 - Antwerp 1658
Biography
Trained initially as a painter, the prolific Flemish engraver Paulus Pontius was a pupil of the printmaker Lucas Vorsterman the Elder, whom he succeeded in the workshop of the painter Peter Paul Rubens. Pontius became a master in the Antwerp Guild and became the artist mainly responsible for reproducing Rubens’s painted works in the form of engravings, working for the master from 1624 onwards. As Paul Huvenne has noted, ‘Pontius proved capable of emulating Vorsterman’s style. He may have been less spontaneous and virtuosic, but he worked in a more controlled and consistent manner. He would engrave fifteen plates for Rubens, but in addition, apparently at his own expense, he would produce a great deal of Rubens’s graphic art.’ Pontius lived in Rubens’s home until the year after the master’s death, and in all produced just over forty engravings after works by Rubens. He later continued to work with other leading painters in Antwerp, notably Anthony Van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens.
Very few drawings by Paulus Pontius are known, of which most have been heavily reworked by Rubens. The most significant of these are two studies for engravings made after Rubens’s paintings; a drawing of The Assumption of the Virgin of c.1624 in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and a Descent of the Holy Spirit of 1627 in the British Museum in London. In both cases the original, underlying drawing in black chalk or brown wash by Pontius has been extensively retouched by Rubens with grey and white gouache. As Rowlands has observed of such drawings, ‘The elaborate drawings made in preparation for prints after Rubens’s paintings give us a close insight into the extent of the master’s collaboration with his engravers. Firstly, the rather mechanical initial task of producing a drawing after the painting was generally delegated to an assistant, or perhaps to the engraver. The quality of this preliminary drawing, usually in black chalk, varies…The master then extensively reworked the sheet, using either washes reinforced with opaque grey and white bodycolour…or oils. In the process Rubens often transformed a weak drawing into a practically autograph one of superb quality. In many cases…important changes were made at this stage to adapt the original composition to suit the printed medium.’
