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Magdalena de Passe

1600 Cologne – before 1640 Utrecht

Together with Geertruyt Roghman and Anna Maria de Koker, Magdalena de Passe was one of the few women artists working in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. Born in 1600 in Cologne, she was trained with her three brothers in the workshop of her father, Crispijn the Elder (ca. 1565-1637). In 1612 the family moved to Utrecht; as a Mennonite, Crispijn was considered a heretic in Cologne. A year later he had already obtained citizenship in Utrecht as a printmaker. The family business evidently became very productive; more than thirteen hundred single sheets and forty-nine illustrated works emerged from its workshop. Magdalena was entirely integrated in this world. Compared to those of her brothers Crispijn the Younger, Simon, and Willem, however, Magdalena's printed oeuvre is small and consists of a few portrait prints and religious images as well as landscapes after Elsheimer, Jacob Pynas, Paulus Bril, and others.