Print collector's quarterly (12.1925)

ADAM ELSHEIMER
I.—HIS EDUCATION AND HIS ENGRAVERS
By ARTHUR M. HIND

SHE news that reached me in your letter of the
18th December [1610] was a bitter grief tome.
For such a loss the whole of our profession
should go into mourning, for it will not easily
find another to take his place. In my judgment he
never had his equal in the painting of small figures, in
landscapes, and in the greatest variety of subject [in
qual si voglia circonstanza] ; moreover he has died while
the flower of his studies had not yet reached its fruit,
and adhuc sua messis in erba, erat, so that one might
have still expected from him such things as will now
never be realised ; in summa ostenderunt terris hunc
tantum fata.
"For myself I can say that I have never been so
stricken with grief as by this news ; nor can I ever
regard with friendliness those who reduced him to
this unhappy end. I pray God pardon Signor Adam
his sin of slothfulness, by which he deprived the world
of the most lovely works, and brought misery and
despair on himself, when with his own handiwork he
might have made a great fortune and earned the respect
of the whole world.”
The letter of Rubens from which the above is an
extract, addressed on January 14th, 1611, to Johann

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