Print collector's quarterly (12.1925)

THE ENGRAVINGS AND WOODCUTS OF

DIRICK VELLERT

By A. E. POPHAM

been
that

R||SHE engravings signed D^V have long
familiar, but it is only in recent years
the real name of their author has come to
® light. The old iconographers plausibly identi-
fied the engraver with a certain Dirk Stas, of Campen,
mentioned by Guicciardini, and supposed that Stas was
an error for Star or Staren. It was then as Dirk van
Staren that he was known up to the time when Gustav
Gluck discovered his real name to be Dirick Jacopssone
Vellert or Felaert.1
The facts of this artist’s life, as they are known from
contemporary documents, are as follows. He was
received as master in the Guild of St. Luke of Antwerp
in 1511 ; himself received pupils in 1512, 1514, 1528
and 1530 ; was, with the glass painter Jan Leer, dean
of the Guild in 1518 and 1526, in which latter year he
is recorded to have designed and issued a device of the
Guild ; is mentioned by Dtirer, in his diary for Sept.,
1520, Jan., 1520 (1521), and May 12th, 152.1, on which
latter date he invited the German artist to a costly
banquet ; and, in the accounts of 0. L. Vrouwekerk
at Antwerp for 1539-40, his servants are recorded as
1 Gustav Gliick, “ Beitrage zur Geschichte der Antwerpener Malerei im
XVI. Jahrhundert.” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorisclien Sammlungen des aller-
hochsten Kaiserhauses. Band XXII.

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