Cornelis Bos or Bossche (c. 1506/10 – before 7 May 1555) was a Flemish
engraver, printseller and book publisher, known for his accurate engravings of Italian works. His work is often signed with the
monogram
A monogram is a motif (visual arts), motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol. Monograms are often made by combining the initials of an individual or a company, used as recognizable symbo ...
C-B.
Biography
He was born at
's Hertogenbosch, whence his surname ''Bos'' is derived, and is registered there until 1637, but he was in
Antwerp
Antwerp (; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest city in Belgium by area at , after ...
by 1 April 1541 when he was granted citizenship of that city and membership in the
Guild of St. Luke. There has been some speculation that he took a trip to Italy in the intervening years, but this is not certain.
His earliest identified engravings reproduce
Maarten van Heemskerck
Maarten van Heemskerck (born Maerten Jacobsz van Veen; 1 June 1498 – 1 October 1574), also known as Marten Jacobsz Heemskerk van Veen, was a Dutch portrait and religious painter, who spent most of his career in Haarlem. He was a pupil of Jan ...
's ''Prudence and Justice'' (1537), and a work by
Agostino Veneziano. His re-engraving of work by
Marcantonio Raimondi does not necessarily indicate that he ever made a trip to Rome. Until 1544 Bos worked in Antwerp as an engraver, commissioned by publishers in the city's extensive book trade for illustrations in books. His engravings, copied from the published engravings in Italian editions, served as illustrations for a brief summary in Dutch of the treaty on architecture by
Vitruvius
Vitruvius ( ; ; –70 BC – after ) was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work titled . As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissan ...
and for a Dutch translation of Book IV of
Sebastiano Serlio
Sebastiano Serlio (6 September 1475 – c. 1554) was an Italian Mannerist architect, who was part of the Italian team building the Palace of Fontainebleau. Serlio helped canonize the classical orders of architecture in his influential treatise ...
's architectural treatise, both published by
. Bos' engravings illustrate a text on anatomy that he produced in 1542 by the printer and publisher Antoine de Goys.
In the summer of 1544 Bos was forced to flee Antwerp for his participation in an
antisacerdotalist free-thinking spiritualist sect and was declared exiled by the Council of Brabant in his absence. It appears that he went to
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
, where an anatomical work published by Jérôme de Gourmont in 1545 repeats text used by Cornelis Bos and even makes use of the woodblocks formerly in his possession. Between 1546 and 1548, from his secure refuge in
Nuremberg
Nuremberg (, ; ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the Franconia#Towns and cities, largest city in Franconia, the List of cities in Bavaria by population, second-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Bav ...
, Cornelis Bos would publish more than a hundred engraved designs of
strapwork
In the history of art and design, strapwork is the use of stylised representations in ornament of ribbon-like forms. These may loosely imitate leather straps, parchment or metal cut into elaborate shapes, with piercings, and often interwoven in ...
and
grotesque
Since at least the 18th century (in French and German, as well as English), grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus ...
s. Bos also produced popular engravings of religious and allegorical subjects, often dependent for their composition upon the ''
Kleinmeisters'' of Nuremberg, with many parallels in the output of
Virgil Solis.
Bos moved to
Groningen
Groningen ( , ; ; or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen (province), Groningen province in the Netherlands. Dubbed the "capital of the north", Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of ...
, where he is registered as having sold paper to the city magistrate 2 December 1548. He was granted citizenship there in 1550. His first wife Lijnken
van Dort or
van den Bos, with whom he had five children, was deceased by then and he remarried Alijdt, who came from a local family. The couple had two children. A document of 7 Mai 1555 refers to him as deceased. An inventory of his workshop and other possessions, taken 3 August 1544, which included two printing presses, and the auction of his property 3 January 1545, have been mined by historians of
printmaking
Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proces ...
.
Works
*
Laocoön and His Sons
The statue of ''Laocoön and His Sons'', also called the Laocoön Group (), has been one of the most famous ancient sculptures since it was excavated in Rome in 1506 and put on public display in the Vatican Museums, where it remains today. The st ...
,
[Cornelis Bos' drawing for the engraving of one of Laocoön's sons at ]Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church (, the temple or house, ''wikt:aedes, ædes'', of Christ, and thus sometimes known as "The House") is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by Henry V ...
, was described by Paul Buschmann, "Drawings by Cornelis Bos and Cornelis Floris", ''The Burlington Magazine'' 29 (November 1916) 324-327
* A decorative patternbook published by
Jérôme de Gourmont, ''Livre de moresques'' (1546) was a pirated edition of a work published in Antwerp by Bos in 1530; it served designers of
mannerist scrollwork (''bandelwerk'') in the Low Countries.
File:Louvre-Lens - L'Europe de Rubens - 125 - Léda et le cygne.JPG, Engraving after a lost work by Michelangelo of Leda and the Swan
Leda and the Swan is a story and subject in art from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, seduces Leda, a Spartan queen. According to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus, while a ...
File:The Holy Trinity LACMA M.88.91.92.jpg, The Holy Trinity
Notes
External links
Bos Cornelis ''All-art.org''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bos, Cornelis
Year of birth uncertain
16th-century deaths
16th-century engravers
Flemish engravers