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Lot Essay
This drawing is a study for a print from the series Academia sive speculum vitae scolasticae, also known as The University or Mirror of Life, published in Amsterdam in 1612 (Fig. 1; I.M. Veldman, Profit and Pleasure. Print Books by Crispijn de Passe, Rotterdam, 2001, p. 165, no. 14, fig. 51). The prints are very early illustrations of a university – it is not specified which – and the lives of students there. The purpose of the publication is explained by De Passe in a Latin poem on the title page: ‘Concerning study and the life of students […], should any wish to know how they alternate seriousness with light-hearted play now and then, and how much toil the honour of a title demands, peruse these illustrations graved on copper plates to refresh your eyes and mind’ (translation ibid., p. 34). He continues to describe that on the one hand he intends to whet the student's appetite for ‘the laudable and necessary exercise of their studies’, but at the same time hopes to deter them from the more dubious pursuits indulged in by less virtuous students.
The title page of the series, for which the model is now at the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris (K.G. Boon, The Netherlandish and German Drawings of the XVth and XVIth Centuries of the Frits Lugt Collection, Zwolle, 1992, I, no. 157, III, pl. 276), is devoted to the serious student. The following plate shows a young student leaving his parental home, the next a public lecture and the third the initiation of students, who are being spanked by whippets (and in one case one of the initiators is even holding an axe). The series ends on a light note with a game of football.
The present drawing shows what was certainly considered uncivilised behaviour: a student performs a serenade at night in front of a girl’s house. The funny hats and the masks that the students are wearing (more clearly visible in the print than in the drawing), stress their foolish behaviour. Joy does not last long; from the right a night-watchman approaches, and in the background the student is shown being beaten by the night-watchman, as is described in the Latin poem beneath the print. According to this poem, ‘the infatuated student who drunkenly stands playing music outside his girlfriend’s door will constantly be looking for new sweethearts, chasing his own misfortune like a fool’ (I.M. Veldman, op. cit., p. 46).
Apart from this previously unidentified and unpublished drawing and the sheet at the Frits Lugt Collection, only one other drawing for the series is known, sold at Sotheby's, Amsterdam, 22 November 1989, lot 3.
Fig. 1. Crispijn van de Passe, Nocturnal serenade, engraving, 1612.
The title page of the series, for which the model is now at the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris (K.G. Boon, The Netherlandish and German Drawings of the XVth and XVIth Centuries of the Frits Lugt Collection, Zwolle, 1992, I, no. 157, III, pl. 276), is devoted to the serious student. The following plate shows a young student leaving his parental home, the next a public lecture and the third the initiation of students, who are being spanked by whippets (and in one case one of the initiators is even holding an axe). The series ends on a light note with a game of football.
The present drawing shows what was certainly considered uncivilised behaviour: a student performs a serenade at night in front of a girl’s house. The funny hats and the masks that the students are wearing (more clearly visible in the print than in the drawing), stress their foolish behaviour. Joy does not last long; from the right a night-watchman approaches, and in the background the student is shown being beaten by the night-watchman, as is described in the Latin poem beneath the print. According to this poem, ‘the infatuated student who drunkenly stands playing music outside his girlfriend’s door will constantly be looking for new sweethearts, chasing his own misfortune like a fool’ (I.M. Veldman, op. cit., p. 46).
Apart from this previously unidentified and unpublished drawing and the sheet at the Frits Lugt Collection, only one other drawing for the series is known, sold at Sotheby's, Amsterdam, 22 November 1989, lot 3.
Fig. 1. Crispijn van de Passe, Nocturnal serenade, engraving, 1612.