Jacques de Gheyn II

Jacques de Gheyn II trained in Hendrick Goltzius’s studio, but left Haarlem for Amsterdam to start his own successful printmaking enterprise. Here De Gheyn employs a much simplified and elegant language of widely spaced, thick swelling lines, and reduces dependence on the lozenge and dot technique. This engraving has been attributed to Andries Stock, a close follower of De Gheyn’s, in addition to de Gheyn himself.

Two elegantly dressed ladies, their coin purses prominently in view, have traveled outside the city to ask an itinerant fortuneteller their fates. As the gypsy, offset by a fantastic tree, takes the coin from the lady’s hand, the lady’s downcast eyes indicate her own moral dilemma. The accompanying verses, which have been cut from this impression, warn the viewer against trusting too much in the knowledge of the future. De Gheyn was interested in the world of witches and soothsayers, and made several compositions of preternatural phenomena.