Jan Antonides van der Linden

Rembrandt had essentially retired from printmaking in 1661, but four years later he received a commission to engrave a frontispiece for a commentary on Hippocrates written by the physician Jan Antonides van der Linden. The author had died the previous year. The publisher Daniel van Gaesbeecq sought an engraver to make a reproduction of a portrait previously painted by Abraham van den Tempel. Rembrandt’s son told the publisher that his father was the man for the job, but Rembrandt was anything but a conventional engraver. Following his familiar old ways, Rembrandt produced an etching heavily augmented by drypoint. Clearly unsuitable for printing in quantity, the plate was never used for the book, and so far as we know Rembrandt never again etched another plate.