ABSTRACT
On 28 August 1815, Goethe received as a birthday gift from Sulpiz Boisserée, the pioneering collector of medieval art, an engraving after a work by Jan van Eyck (Fig. 1). 1 Boisserée, reverent, concealed a few of his own verses under the print, framing the sheets of paper with sprigs of oak, laurel, and clover. In his diary, Boisserée recorded the great man’s reaction to the poetry but not to the print, unfortunately. 2 The engraving replicates with near-perfect fidelity every dash, dot, and stroke of Van Eyck’s work, the St. Barbara, now in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp (Fig. 2). 3 Although framed and signed, the picture is not in fact an oil painting but a kind of drawing on prepared panel. It measures 41 by 28 centimeters with its frame, the print very nearly the same. 4 The engraved facsimile is so successful that on quick inspection one might easily mistake it for a pen drawing, as some contemporaries of Goethe apparently did. Wurzbach reported that the print was long exhibited in Bruges as a drawing. 5 Cornelis van Noorde after Jan van Eyck, <italic>St. Barbara</italic>, 1769, engraving. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. A sketch of St. Barbara holding a scepter and book, with a towering Gothic cathedral and a bustling medieval city in the background. https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781003697855/cf00d316-4c4f-41b8-a0f7-d2f2cb7200f3/content/pg467_Image_100.tif"/> Jan van Eyck, <italic>St. Barbara</italic>, 1437, panel. Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten. A sketch of St. Barbara seated in front of a towering Gothic cathedral, surrounded by a bustling medieval cityscape. https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781003697855/cf00d316-4c4f-41b8-a0f7-d2f2cb7200f3/content/pg469_Image_101.tif"/>
