Enigmes Joyeuses pour les Bons Esprits, Plate 6

Jan van Haelbeeck

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sixth plate of a group of 9 plates with small domestic scenes, engraved by Jan van Haelbeeck, which were either 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. In this plate, two women, dressed in 17th-century court dress, and a man, also wearing aristocratic clothes, play a game on top of a clothed table, inside a room with clean tiles and open windows. The game they play requires a wooden (?) set, held by one of the women on top of the table, with holes through which small balls, thrown by the man from the other side of the table, enter. The plate accompanies one of the sonnets of the Enigmes, which describes the nature of the game, while also hinting to another, slightly more erotic activity. This double meaning of the images and sonnets of the Enigmes helps explain why most copies of the series, although very popular and influential in their day, have been lost.

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