Clement de Jonghe, Printseller

Rembrandt van Rijn was a Dutch painter, draughtsman, and printmaker whose etchings transformed the possibilities of printed portraiture in the seventeenth century. This etching and drypoint portrait depicts Clement de Jonghe, an Amsterdam print and map dealer whose business connected artists, engravers, publishers, collectors, and buyers in the Dutch Republic.

Although no documentary evidence confirms whether the portrait was commissioned, De Jonghe’s professional association with Rembrandt is well established. He is known to have acquired at least seventy-four of Rembrandt’s original etched copper plates, probably during the artist’s lifetime. These plates were later dispersed through the auction of De Jonghe’s estate, making him an important figure in the survival and circulation of Rembrandt’s printed work.

De Jonghe is shown seated, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and heavy cloak, his body turned slightly while his face looks directly toward the viewer. The portrait is informal in pose but carefully constructed through light, shadow, and line. Rembrandt uses dense hatching and drypoint burr around the cloak and chair, while leaving other passages more open, giving the figure both physical weight and psychological presence.

The sitter is especially relevant to this collection because De Jonghe was part of Amsterdam’s print and map trade. His shop sold prints, maps, portraits, ornamental prints, political material, and other engraved works. The portrait therefore gives a human face to the commercial network through which maps, views, portraits, and etched plates circulated in seventeenth-century Amsterdam.