Hieronymus Wierix
Flemish, 1553 - 1619
Engraver, brother of Jan Wierix. At his father’s death, one of the guardians to whom he was entrusted was Jerome Manacker, who was probably a close relative of the goldsmith of the same name ( fl Antwerp, 1520–56). Jerome also began his training by making engravings after Dürer, an activity in which he showed himself to be more precocious than his older brother. He joined Christoph Plantin in 1570 and, like his brother, became a master in 1572–3. In 1574 Plantin paid a fine for Jerome, who had been arrested drunk at night. The publisher was even more exasperated by Jerome’s lifestyle than by Jan’s, and after he had rescued Jerome from prison the next year, he decided not to continue to employ him. From 1577, the date of his first independent engraving, Jerome worked for several other publishers. Between 1577 and 1580 he made many prints for Willem van Haecht and his nephew Godevaard van Haecht (1546–99). These were mostly allegorical and political in theme and demonstrate a sympathy for those rebelling against the Spanish.
Jerome’s dissolute lifestyle got him into serious trouble in October 1578: in a state of inebriation, he threw a beer jug at the wife of an innkeeper and hit her on the head. When she died six weeks later, he was arrested. His friends and family paid large sums of money to the victim’s family and Jerome appealed to Archduke Matthias of Austria for pardon, as a result of which after a year of imprisonment he was released. (The few engravings dated 1579 were probably done before the accident.) In the first years after his pardon he obviously worked hard, for there are many engravings dated between 1580 and 1588. These were mainly published by Jan-Baptist Vrients ( fl c. 1575–1610), Hans Liefrinck, Hans van Luyck ( fl c. 1580), Johann Sadeler (i) and Adriaan Huybrechts ( fl 1573–1614). Occasionally, Jerome again worked for Plantin, for whom he executed, for instance, many of the illustrations in Geronimo Nadal’s Counter-Reformatory books, the Evangelicae historiae imagines and the Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia (m-h, nos 1989–2141). Jerome had two pupils from 1588 to 1589, Samuel van Hoogstraten and Jacob de Weert (1569–after 1600), and in 1614 he took Jan van de Sande (1600–1664/5) as an apprentice. In 1587 he had married Dymphna de Backer [Beckers] (d before 1601), but the marriage was not a success: within the first three years his wife ran away from him six or seven times. They nonetheless had five children, one son and four daughters. Jerome’s later years were less wild than his youth, and by the time he died he was wealthy enough for his estate to be the subject of a fierce struggle among his children.
Carl Van de Velde. "Wierix." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T091516pg2 (accessed March 8, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
Dutch, born 1610; active in Leiden,1631-1635