ABSTRACT
Designed by Karel van Mander for his great friend and Maecenas Hendrick Goltzius, e Nativity Broadcast by Prophets of the Incarnation emulates Cornelis Cort’s explicitly Jesuit print of 1571, broadening its exegetical apparatus to accommodate Roman Catholic, Mennonite and Reformed readings of the birth and manifestation of Christ to the shepherds (Figures 3.1 and 3.2 below).1 Goltzius’s stepson and chief assistant Jacob Matham served as engraver of the large copperplate measuring 26.4 × 38.2 cm. Cort’s Annunciation Broadcast by Prophets of the Incarnation, engraved on two plates and printed on two foliosize sheets, measuring 46 × 68 cm in total, adapts the famous fresco by Federico Zuccaro, formerly in the tribune vault of SS Annunziata, the collegiate church of the Jesuit Seminario Romano in Rome.2 is grand print, published by Antoine
1 On e Nativity Broadcast by Prophets of the Incarnation, see H. Leeang and C. Schuckman (eds), and M. Leesberg (comp.), Karel van Mander, e New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450-1700 (Rotterdam, 1999), pp. 40-42, no. 45.
