VOSTERMAN Lucas

‘the Elder’ (Bommel 1595- Antwerp 1675)

Flemish engraver and painter active in Antwerp. It is not known if his training was as an engraver.
It seems that initially he was a follower of Hendrick Goltzius, while he later entered the workshop of Pieter Paul Rubens of which he was the first engraver for several years and reproduced on copperplates many paintings and drawings.
His first etching was a copy of Cornelis Cort’s ‘Rest during the Flight into Egypt’, which in turn was derived from a painting by Federico Barocci. Lucas realized this work in 1607 at a very young age.
In 1618 he became a member of the Guild of San Luca and in 1619 he married Anna Francx, daughter of a well-known printing publisher in Antwerp.
The production of etchings continued uninterruptedly and at the almost frenetic pace that Rubens required. The intense work required led Vosterman to have a nervous breakdown. Thus, between 1624 and 1629 he transferred his activity to England, but in 1630 he resumed his collaboration with Rubens, who considered him the best among the etchers of his workshop.
In this period Vosterman also worked in close contact with Van Dyck, so that Lucas etched some of the portraits included in the Iconographia of Van Dyck (a large series of portraits of the most famous artists of northern Europe). The skill of the technique and the successful transposition of the Rubensian models have made him an exceptional performer of the great Flemish Master.