Enigmes Joyeuses pour les Bons Esprits

Jan van Haelbeeck

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Group of 9 plates from a total of 10 with small domestic scenes, engraved by Jan van Haelbeeck, one of the first wave of Flemish artist to establish themselves in Paris in the early 17th century, which caused a revival in French printmaking and led to the important role France would play as a center of printmaking during the reign of King Louis XIV. Genre scenes of these kind were especially common in Northern Europe in the 17th century, and reveal the everyday lives of people from different strata. In this case, they show women playing instruments or collecting water, household scenes playing games or getting dressed, a woman eating, and people at work. They were made for, or reused by Jean Leclerc around 1615 in the sonnet series ‘Enigmes Joyeuses pour les Bons Esprits’, in which they were each published with a sonnet that hinted at the double meaning of the activities. Although the series is quite rare nowadays, it was very popular and influential in its day. Most copies were likely lost due to the double, slightly erotic meaning of the images and sonnets of the Enigmes.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art