Wenceslaus
(Wenzel) Hollar was one of Europe’s greatest seventeenth century engravers. He
was born in Prague in 1607, where as a teenager he studied under Matthaus
Merian. At the age of twenty he left Bohemia, and travelled to Germany. In 1636
he journeyed to England where he met Thomas Howard, second Earl of Arundel,
England’s premier nobleman. It was Arundel's desire to create a visual
inventory of his art collection and thus employed Hollar to etch copies of his
artworks. Hollar was to continue publishing and engraving works for the Arundel
collection but by 1640 he began to achieve independent recognition. He covered
a vast array of subjects for his patrons, for publishers and in collaboration
with other artists: architectural and topographical views, maps, copies of
paintings and drawings and depictions of people, fashions, and events. No other
artist recorded so many aspects of seventeenth-century English life as did
Hollar; he executed one of the largest and most detailed depictions of London in
1644 and 1666 his views before and during the Great Fire of London serve as an
essential record of the event. With the exception of a one year absence, Hollar
spent the remainder of his life in England and died in London in 1677. He had
spent forty years recording his impressions of the turbulent era in which he
lived and today is regarded as one of the most important master etchers of his
time.