The print Tabella I from Broelmann’s Epideigma brings together the burial monuments discovered in the 16th century as well as findings from Cologne and the surrounding area. Both the selection of certain objects and their arrangement on the sheet refer to the Mercator Plan created almost 40 years earlier.
For example, Hogenberg adopts the bronze statuette of a genius (44) next to the stone figure of a hermaphrodite (43) that are shown in the Mercator Plan’s right-hand margin, and places them centrally at the bottom edge of his picture. The grave stele fragment with a meal scene shown top right from the burial ground of St. Ursula in Cologne (ca. 125–50 AD) and the sarcophagus fragment of the Empress Crispina Augusta (14), who was exiled in the 2nd century, come from Broelmann’s own collection. In Tabella I, the chronological layers up to the early modern period deliberately overlap; for example, some of the figures on the relief plates are wearing costumes from the 16th century. This strategy is evident in the servant on relief plate 40, who is depicted in a short early modern coat with a collar. At the same time, the sheet reflects the central role of the printmaking medium for the visual reception and representation of antiquity in the early modern period. The simple hatching of the background, characterised by mainly parallel lines, clearly marks pictorial space as a dimension constructed by printmaking.
Further Reading
- Noelke, Peter: Kölner Antikensammlungen und -studien vom Humanismus bis zur Aufklärung, in: Kölner Jahrbuch 49 (2016), pp. 535–547.
- Schäfer, Alfred: Stephan Broelmann (1551–1622). Agrippa und die Gründung Kölns, in: Dietrich Boschung / Erich Kleinschmidt (Hgg.): Lesbarkeiten. Antikerezeption zwischen Barock und Aufklärung, Würzburg 2010, pp. 101–120.
- Schöller, Bernadette: Arbeitsteilung in der Druckgraphik um 1600. Die "Epideigma" des Stephan Broelmann, in: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte Vol. 54, No. 3 (1991), pp. 406–411. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1482581 (last accessed: 30th November 2022).
- Schütte, Sven / Gechter, Marianne: Stephan Broelmann und die Folgen. Karten Kölns, der konstantinischen Rheinbrücke und der römischen Wasserleitung nach Köln aus 380 Jahren, in: Kölner Museums-Bulletin: Berichte, Forschungen und Aktuelles aus den Museen der Stadt Köln (1999) pp. 4–26.
- Zimmermann, Petra S.: 331 Stephan Broelman. Epideigma, in: LVR-Landes Museums Bonn (Ed.): Renaissance am Rhein, Katalog zur Ausstellung Renaissance am Rhein 16. September 2010 –6. Februar 2011, Bonn 2010, pp. 440–442.
