Aer

Adriaen Collaert was a Flemish engraver, draughtsman, and print publisher active in Antwerp in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He worked within the Antwerp print culture associated with Philips Galle and the Plantin-Moretus press, producing religious, allegorical, natural-historical, and ornamental engravings for a learned European market.

Classical and medieval natural philosophy held that all matter was composed of four elements: earth, water, fire, and air. Early modern artists often represented these elements as allegorical figures, accompanied by symbolic attributes, landscape settings, and related narrative scenes. Collaert’s Four Elements series presents semi-nude personifications set within oval frames, with putti in the spandrels echoing the attributes of the central figures. The Latin verses are by Cornelis Kiliaan, a corrector at Christopher Plantin’s publishing house in Antwerp and an important Dutch lexicographer. In this engraving, Aer, or Air, is personified as a seated male figure resting on clouds. His hair rises into vapour, visually merging his body with the element he represents. In his right hand he holds a chameleon, a creature traditionally believed to live on air alone. Birds fill the sky above the mountainous landscape. In the right background, the Resurrection of Christ provides the corresponding biblical scene.

Kiliaan’s Latin inscription reflects both the nurturing and volatile nature of air: Mobilis, & rerum per cuncta meabilis AËR, / Afflatu alituum promovet omne genus: / Commotus nimbos tempestatesque minatur, / Tranquillus terris aequoirbusq[ue] favet. "Mobile Air, passable through all things, by its nourishing breath causes every species to thrive: aroused, it brings forth rainstorms and tempests; tranquil, it favours lands and seas."

See also 438by Jean LeClerc