Pieter de Jode I worked at a period when the terms of art itself were being renegotiated.
The record lists Pieter de Jode I as engraver, painter.
Pieter de Jode I was born at Antwerp in 1573. His recorded nationality is Belgium.
This was the period in which the artist became an individual with a signature, a reputation and a price.
He worked as publisher, copper engraver and draftsperson.
An artist's reputation moves with taste, but the work stays exactly where it was left.
That the work was made in Belgium shaped it: artistic traditions, academies and the galleries that decide what is seen have never been evenly distributed.
Pieter de Jode I died in 1634, aged 61. The work remains, hanging in collections that outlived both the artist and the market that first priced it.
