During the third quarter of the sixteenth century, Antwerp’s Hieronymus Cock (1518 – 1570) was the most important publisher of printed imagery north of the Alps, if not in all Europe. Fittingly, he dubbed his printing concern Aux Quatre Vents (At the Sign of the Four Winds). From his presses in the Low Countries, he circulated countless prints of an astonishing array of subjects, styles, and functions to the four corners of the globe.

Joris van Grieken, Ger Luijten, and Jan Van der Stock have produced the present volume in conjunction with their large-scale 2013 exhibition of Quatre Vents prints and preparatory drawings at the M-Museum, Leuven and the Institut Néerlandais, Paris. This is the first sustained scholarship on Cock since Timothy Riggs’s seminal dissertation of 1971 (Garland Press, 1977). The present volume is also the very first with copious prints by Cock in handsome high-resolution reproductions. Given the Quatre Vents’ undeniable importance, it is tempting to express bewilderment at the forty-year interval between major studies. But the long wait is not surprising; the publishing house’s oeuvre is so vast, so revealing of the diverse subcultures that Cock tapped, that to account for it in any way approaching completeness will always be a Herculean task.

In all aspects, this book reflects its editors’ respect for the colossal scope of the Quatre Vents, not only under Cock, but also under the stewardship of his wife, Volcxken Diericx (d. 1600). That it encompasses such a colossal achievement is thanks to the recruitment of a veritable parliament of experts who lend a variety of specialties to the proceedings; twenty scholars contributed essays and catalogue entries. Thus the expansive means for describing the Quatre Vents is commensurate with its historical ambitions.

Van Grieken et. al. have divided the subject into specific topic areas, presented in seven concise introductory essays. None exceeds ten pages. Van der Stock, Van Grieken, and Luijten entitled their brief introduction pointedly: “Challenging Talent and Letting it Grow.” Framing the volume, this essay succinctly suggests the overarching theme developed in the book’s remainder: Cock’s recognition, cultivation, and monetization of work by great artists, cartographers, humanists, and engravers into a multifaceted form of artistic genius all its own, not an “abandonment of art” as Karel van Mander wrote in his Schilderboek.

The next two essays, by Van der Stock and Van Grieken, respectively, update some Quatre Vents fundamentals. Van der Stock describes the collaboration between Cock and his wife Volcxken Diericx (d. 1600). Van Grieken takes advantage of recent archival findings to reconstruct a Quatre Vents stocklist where none has survived. These essays are the first to give Diericx her due. It is now clear that she ran the Quatre Vents with conviction and savvy for thirty years after Cock’s death (ten years longer than he himself oversaw operations). Her maintenance of the plates was exceedingly fastidious – some 1,604 have survived thanks to her. While there is still plenty of work to do on Diericx’s Quatre Vents stewardship, we now have a solid foundation for further study.

Subsequent essays address the various categories of imagery that emanated from the Quatre Vents. Luijten explores Cock’s publication of Italianate imagery, clarifying the Quatre Vents’ relation to earlier Italian publishers of art prints. Il Baviera, Salamanca, and Lafreri were Cock’s key exemplars, but he astutely synthesized their strengths. Peter Fuhring next traces the origins of Cock’s ornamental prints back to Serlio via Cornelis Bos’s circle and then reveals its subsequent influence in France, Flanders and Italy. Krista De Jonge convinces us that Cock’s publications of prints with archaeological refractions helped to put the Low Countries into the vanguard of antiquarianism. Manfred Sellink notes the pervasive presence of landscape throughout Cock’s publications – ruins, rustic scenes, and sacred narratives in landscapes. Sellink sees in this diversity Cock’s awareness of beauty’s theoretical indebtedness to varietas. Finally, Walter Bracke and Pieter Martens argue that Cock’s maps indicate his continued contact with designers, cartographers, and printers in Rome. These essays elegantly progress from subject to subject.

The catalogue presents Cock’s publications in sections based on similarly divided themes: Roman ruins; prints after Italian artists or of subjects related to Italian art; prints by Netherlanders working in an Italianate manner (especially Heemskerck, Lombard, and Floris); prints addressing Christian Virtue and Vice; imagery by the Bosch-Bruegel line in “the Netherlandish Tradition;” architecture and ornament; prints honoring Charles V; and prints that “map the world,” including landscape. Each sections receives its own short introduction. Entries are consistently concise but rich, indicating detailed editorial follow-through.

On such a successful publication, which must have been so difficult to make, one hesitates to turn critical. But we should signal some problems before concluding. This volume’s inattention to how Cock’s output refracts the age of exploration disappoints. This lack is especially acute, given prints’ famous capacity for dissemination and the recent scholarly attention to an early modern Netherlandish global consciousness. Also, while parsing Cock’s output into so many small sections, these divisions obscure synthesis and depth on some topics (despite Sellink’s exceptional essay). For example, Rome’s ruins were among the most combinative subjects Cock published; they were at once archaeological, architectural, and Italianate, while formatted as landscape. They were also the product of a Netherlandish gaze. But in the catalogue section, they receive short discussion, and they receive glancing mentions in essays on related subjects (De Jonge’s essay on archaeology has a more general mission), but no sustained analysis. Similarly, while this volume’s scholarship is deeply indebted to Riggs, no one engages one of his most important arguments: that the Quatre Vents’ witnessed a considerable decline in the 1560s.

None of these problems impedes this book’s resounding success. It is a stellar achievement. Doubtless, it will stand as the definitive resource on the Quatre Vents for quite some time.

Arthur J. DiFuria
Savannah College of Art and Design