Spaightwood Galleries

In his preface to his Commentary on the Book of Psalms (1557), John Calvin suggests the place that David and his Psalms held in the imagination of learned Renaissance readers of Psalms and collectors of art: "I have been accustomed to call this book, I think not inappropriately, 'An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul,' for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather the Holy Spirit has here drawn to the life all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated. . . . [H]ere the prophets themselves, seeing that they are exhibited to us as speaking to God, and laying all their inmost thoughts and affections, call, or rather draw, each of us to the imagination of himself in particular, in order that none of the many infirmities to which we are subject, and of the many vices with which we abound, may remain concealed. It is certainly a rare and singular advantage, when all lurking places are discovered, and the heart is brought into the light, purged from that most baneful infection, hypocrisy" (John Calvin: Selections from His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (NY: Doubleday, 1971), p. 23). David is the perfect everyman because, as John Lyly puts it in the opening pages of his Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578), "In all perfect works as well the fault as the face is to be shown": and exemplifies this paradox with the figures of David and his son Solomon:"Solomon wise yet too too wanton. David holy, but yet an homicide" (Paul Salzman, ed. An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction [NY: Oxford University press, 1987], pages 85 and 89), exemplifying what Lyly says is the truth of the natural condition: "As therefore the sweetest rose hath his prickle, the finest velvet his brack, the fairest flower his bran, so the sharpest wit hath his wanton will, and the holiest head his wicked way." Solomon's wisdom, the gift granted him by God, cannot prevent him from building temples for the pagan gods of his wives surrounding the temple he builds for the God of Israel and David, annointed by Samuel at God's direction as His choice for the crown, His chosen one to succeed Saul as King after Saul proves more afraid of displeasing the people than willing to fulfill God's rather explicit directions for what He wants done (see 1 Samuel 15: 10-35; 1 Kings 15: 10-35 in a Protestant Bible), despite his love for God, cannot keep himself from allowing his love for Bathsheba to lead him to adultery and murder.

In the works that folow, we present a set of 10 engravings executed c. 1556 after drawings by Maerten van Heemskerck, one of the leading Netherlandish artists of the later 16th century and one whose inventions proved invaluable to such printmakers as Philips Galle, who frequently worked from Heemskerck's drawings. In this case, although we do not know the identity of the engraver, plate 1 of the set identifies Heemskerk as the inventor and Joan Galle as the publisher. It is rare to find a complete set of such works in any condition; these are in very good condition and the plates are printing very strongly. The set tells a story, or at least a part of a story, but the story is not necessarily a narrative so much as it is an emblem of the way of all flesh.

For Heemskerck, see volumes 1 and 2 in the New Hollstein catalogues raisonnés of Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts 1470-1700, compiled by Ilja M. Veldman, edited by Ger Luitjen, and published in 1993 and 1994 by Koninklijke van Poll (Roosendall) in 1973-1974 in cooperation with the Rijksprentkabinet at the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam). Since many of the prints engraved by Philips Galle were also published by him and, after his death by the brothers Theodor and Johannes Galle, it is possible that these also were engraved by Philips Galle since the second and third states were published by the brothers.