Gérard Edelinck

Gérard Edelinck (20 October 1640 (baptized) – 2 April 1707) was a copper-plate engraver and print publisher of Flemish origin, who worked in Paris from 1666 and became a naturalized French citizen in 1675.

[1] Edelinck was born in Antwerp, where he received his early training under the engravers Gaspar Huybrechts (1619–1684) and Cornelius Galle the Younger.

[2] His excellence was generally acknowledged; and having become known to Louis XIV he was appointed, on the recommendation of Le Brun, teacher at the academy established at the Gobelins manufactory for the training of workers in tapestry.

Edelinck stands above and apart from his predecessors and contemporaries in that he excelled, not in some one respect, but in all respects, that while one engraver attained excellence in correct form, and another in rendering light and shade, and others in giving color to their prints and the texture of surfaces, he, as supreme master of the burin, possessed and displayed all these separate qualities, in so complete a harmony that the eye is not attracted by any one of them in particular, but rests in the satisfying whole.

Among these are those of Le Brun, Rigaud, Champaigne, Nanteuil, La Fontaine, Colbert, John Dryden, Descartes, Jean-Baptiste Lully, etc.