1570
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Four Seasons: Summer is a 1570 by Pieter van der Heyden, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This shows a hot summer day in the Netherlands. A man naps under a tree while others work in the fields. Oxen pull a plow under an unforgiving sun. Prints like this were big business in the 1500s. Hieronymus Cock’s Antwerp shop sold them worldwide. His firm, Aux quartre Vents, spread images fast. Look for more summer scenes by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
By the mid-16th century printmaking and printselling were big business in Europe. One of the most important firms, in Antwerp, was Hieronymus Cock's Aux quartre Vents (at the Sign of the Four Winds), so named because its goal was to disseminate prints to all four corners of the earth. Breugel collaborated with Cock by supplying drawings that were transformed into prints by professional engravers. In 1565 Bruegel executed a group of paintings of the months of the year based on the tradition of late medieval calendar illumination in which the labors of peasants mark the passage of the seasons.…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Pieter van der Heyden (c. 1530 - after March 1572) was a Flemish printmaker who is known for his reproductive engravings after works by leading Flemish painters and designers of the 16th century.
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