Waterfall with shepherd and four goats. Plate 1. From a set of six landscapes

Aegidius Sadeler II (1570–1629) was a Flemish engraver who was principally active at the Prague court of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor and his successors. He was the leading member of the second generation of this important engraving/publishing dynasty.

His early engavings were mostly faithful copies of works by Albrecht Dürer in the Imperial collection and copies of paintings by notable Italian painters such as Raphael, Tintoretto, Parmigianino, Barocci and Titian or by Northern painters who worked there, such as Paul Bril and Denys Calvaert. In Prague he also engraved portraits of the notables of Rudolf's court, and collaborated with Bartholomeus Spranger, the great Northern Mannerist painter and a compatriot of Sadeler's.

This print is the first in a series of six landscapes engraved by Sadeler after original works by Roelant Savery, a leading Dutch artist who primarily painted landscapes in the Flemish tradition, often embellished with many meticulously painted animals and plants, regularly with a mythological or biblical theme as background. This series is more purely idyllic. The other scenes comprise: three men drinking near the staircase of a house; a cottage built over water on piles; a stag-hunt in the marshes; three men and a dog on a path above a waterfall; and a rabbit hunt in a wood.

This engraving is in the so-called King George IV album of Old Master prints, acquired by the Dominion Museum, forerunner of Te Papa, in 1910.

See: Wikipedia, 'Aegidius Sadeler', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegidius_Sadeler

Dr Mark Stocker           Curator, Historical International Art       February 2017