Plantin, the Moretus and their work / by Maurits Sabbe.

  • Maurits Sabbe
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Plantin, the Moretus and their work / by Maurits Sabbe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    reveries was entirely governed by very practical, unos¬ tentatious virtues; the man who taught the merchants of Antwerp the wisdom of humanism, not as a hero or a pioneer, but as a skilful worker, a perspicacious ma¬ nufacturer and merchant, the man whose life will re¬ main an object lesson of energy and spiritual balance for coming generations. He is a splendid type of the latter years of the earfy Renaissance period in Ant¬ werp, with its Erasmian tendency towards a higher intellectuality, and its daring spirit of enterprise also in the domain of economy. Next to Plantin comes Balthasar I, the most bril¬ liant member of the Moretus family, a representative of another period, with a less daring spirit but with a higher sense of art and a deeper love for riches and splendour. It is he who so embellished his dwelling that Woverius named it together with that of Rubens amongst the wonderful sights of Antwerp; it was for him also that Rubens painted the fine portraits of princes of the race and famous friends of the family, portraits adorning the sumptuous halls with all the splendour of genuine and perfect art. This Balthasar also, with the unfaltering taste of the erudite and elegant Latinist formed in the school of Justus Lip- sius, continued the printing business according to tra¬ dition, but none the less caused the magnificent genius of the Antwerp painters of the XVHth century to flourish in his wonderful volumes.