Statue of naked walking Dionysus and a satyr at his side, from a suite of 100 etchings entitled Signorum Veterum Icones, Dutch, 1669.

Plate 63 from de Bisschop’s suite entitled Signorum Veterum Icones showing a statue of Dionsyus shown holding a bunch of grapes and embracing a satyr.

Jan de Bisschop (1628-1671), also known as Johannes Episcopius, was a Dutch painter and printmaker. He first studied to be become a lawyer but then abandoned the profession in order to study art with Bartholomeus Breenbergh (1598 c.-1657 c.), a Dutch painter specialising in Italianate landscapes. In 1656 de Bisschop took part in the foundation of the Confrerie Pictura, a club of artists, in The Hague.
He was particularly interested in the teaching of art and this resulted in his making two series of prints based on classical statues and on sixteenth and seventeenth century artists for students to draw from. The first of these suites is the Signorum Veterum Icones which was published by Nicolaes Visscher in two parts in 1668 and 1669 while the Paradigmata Graphices variorum artificum in 1671. The two volumes of the Icones were subsequently published in one single edition, together with the Paradigmata. The Icones comprises of a suite of 100 plates of reproductive prints of sculptures, including a large number of well known statues of the Greek and Roman period. The second suite, the Paradigmata, consists of 57 reproductive plates of paintings and sculptures by Italian and Dutch sixteenth and seventeenth century artists.

The sculpture is now at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden and was in Holland by in the seventeenth century. This plate is after a drawing that de Bisschop made of the statue. The print depicts the statue with the later restorations of some parts of the group, as we can see from the join point in the original statue. Dionysus was the god of wine in both Greek and Roman mythology. As is tradition with representations of Dionysus, he is here shown crowned with vine leaves, holding a stick called a thyrsus and leaning drunkenly against a satyr.

This suite of 100 prints by de Bisschop comprises of classical sculptures housed in Dutch and Italian collections in the seventeenth century. Ancient statues were highly regarded as works of art, in particular by artists who admired their representation of anatomy, drapery and poses. This suite includes some of the most important sculptures, from various view points, from which the artist could study.

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