Welcome to the online catalogue Early Modern Dutch Prints at the Middlebury College Museum of Art. This catalogue features a selection of 16th- and 17th-century Dutch prints from the Middlebury College Museum of Art’s extensive collection of works on paper. Since paper is a light-sensitive material, these artworks cannot be on display in the museum galleries for extended periods of time. This digital catalogue, curated by Simone Edgar Holmes ‘20.5, Associate Professor Carrie Anderson, and the students in her Printmaking in Rembrandt’s Time courses, seeks to make these works accessible to new and wider audiences. 

All of the prints in this catalogue were created using intaglio printmaking processes, in which the artist uses a sharp tool to make a channel in a metal plate, into which they push ink and pull a reverse impression. The difference between the three major intaglio techniques represented in this catalogue––engraving, etching, and drypoint––is how the artist makes that channel. You can learn more about how 16th- and 17th-century Dutch artists employed these printmaking techniques by reading the catalogue entries organized by genre and technique: Mythological Engravings, Biblical Etchings, and Genre and Landscape Prints. You may follow the links within these entries or visit the Glossary page for more information on printmaking terminology, and see the Thematic Essays page for deeper explorations into themes and issues in early modern Dutch prints.