Lucas Emil Vorsterman

The young Flemish artist Lucas Vorsterman was the first engraver to work for Pieter Paul Rubens with the express mission of reproducing his paintings. Vorsterman covered every inch of the copperplate, realizing fully the tonal transitions from background to foreground with an astounding array of marks. The Virgin’s face comprises light, ornamental flicking characteristic of the fine manner, combined with the netting and grids more common to Agostino Carracci’s system. The untidy, almost haphazard application of marks at the edges of forms (look at the ox’s snout, for instance) produced soft transitions that one would observe in a painting. The sheer number of marks decreases the emphasis on individual lines, achieving Rubens’s desired effect of overall tone and color.

After learning of the birth of a Messiah from an angel, the shepherds visited the nativity as near witnesses to the birth of Christ. Rubens’s painting of this subject originally hung in the Church of St. John in Mechelen.