Jacht op zeehonden 1582 - 1633

Philips Galle made this engraving of a seal hunt with an etching needle on copper sometime between 1570 and 1612. In it, we see how a group of men are hunting seals in a coastal landscape. Galle was from Antwerp, a city which in the 16th century had become a booming center for the printing industry. Prints like this one played an important role in the period. They were relatively cheap to produce, and allowed for the wide circulation of imagery. They helped to create a shared visual culture, standardizing ideas about how the world looked. In this case, we might think about the status of nature in the rapidly urbanizing and commercializing society of the Netherlands. Galle’s print idealizes human mastery over the natural world, making it available for consumption and trade. To understand this print better, we could look at period sources describing hunting practices, or study the trade networks that were developing in the Netherlands at the time.