Ian Harmensz Kruls Minne-spiegel ter deughden
A 1639 Dutch emblem book printed in Amsterdam by Cornelis Dankertsz van Zeevenhoven, written by Jan Harmensz Krul, a poet of the period, and aimed at a general readership of moral and amorous verse. Its engravings are small, quiet scenes of courtship, bedchamber intrigue and cupids, with figures in seventeenth-century dress set against plain architecture and landscape. A designer could take from them the compact staging of gesture and costume, where a kneeling suitor, a pointing cupid or a canopied bed tells a whole story in one frame.
