GALLERY VENUS

Among all the motives, which can be found on stamps, there are some presenting art. With today's possibilities it is fairly easy to transform and reproduce images, but it isn't very long since one had to see an engraver, who could make the painting finding place on a stamp. That work had to be done with a magnifyer and an engraver's needle and just one bad marking would ruin all of the work. To produce a stamp was as much a piece of art, as anything else.
The only honour that an engraver was granted though, was that he could put his name at the bottom of his work. Usually that is so tiny that one again needs a magnifying glass in order to read it.... It is so easy to forget the artist behind that work, when we wet a stamp and put it onto a letter, as we have done for over a century now. This page is dedicated to all those unknown masters.

Click on a thumbnail to see the real image and for a short biography of the painter.

Allow me to start with showing some paintings in large format, which easily have found room on a stamp, even if some of them only show parts of the original painting:

H. Holzschuher by Dürer	Cleopatra's death by Cagnacci	Angelo Doni by Raphael	Lisant, Rembrandt's mother by Rembrandt

And now some other stamps, engraved ones, which truly are masterpieces in minature:

Peasant marriage by P. Brueghel the E.	Hare by Dürer	Child's head by Rubens	Jacopo de' Strada by Titian