Alardo de Popma (before 1617–1641) was a

Flemish Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...

engraver, who worked in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

in the early seventeenth century, according to the earliest references to his works. His copperplate

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ...

s include

title-page The title page of a book, thesis or other written work is the page at or near the front which displays its title, subtitle, author, publisher, and edition, often artistically decorated. (A half title, by contrast, displays only the title of a wor ...

s, frontispieces and

portrait A portrait is a portrait painting, painting, portrait photography, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, Personality type ...

s, which are characterized by an exceptionally clean and confident line. His is known to have lived in

Seville Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...

for a time, perhaps in order to undertake a commission there.

Works

In 1616 he produced the engravings for the ''Cronicón de la excelentísima casa de los Ponce de León'', published in 1620. He executed the title-page for the ''Comentario sobre las palabras de Nuestra Señora, que se hallan en el Evangelio'' by Fr.

Pedro de Abreu Pedro is a masculine given name. Pedro is the Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician name for ''Peter''. Its French equivalent is Pierre while its English and Germanic form is Peter. The counterpart patronymic surname of the name Pedro, meaning ...

in 1617. In 1621 he joined forces with Jan de Courbes to produce a work commissioned by the

Order of Merced The Royal, Celestial and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy and the Redemption of the Captives ( la, Ordo Beatae Mariae de Mercede Redemptionis Captivorum, abbreviated O. de M.), also known as the Mercedarians, is a Catholic mendicant order es ...

that included fifteen copper plates. In 1624, he engraved the title-page of Pedro Fernández de Navarrete's ''Conservación de las Monarquías y Discursos políticos'' (Madrid, 1626) and later the title-page for the ''Historia de las Ordenes Militares de

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, Calatrava y Alcantara'' (Madrid, 1629), by Francisco Caro de Torres, as well as the frontispiece for the ''Obras de San Juan de la Cruz'' (1630), commissioned by the widow of Pedro Madrigal. Other works include his contributions to ''El glorioso doctor San Ildefonso'' by Salazar de Mendoza ( Toledo, c. 1618) and to ''El embajador'' by Juan de Vera y Zúñiga (1620). The latter is one of his most renowned works, because of the clarity of the line and the play of light.

References

* * Enciclopedia Espasa, tomo 46.
Sevilla archivo municipal

Los Reyes Solares. Autor Víctor Mínguez, Victor Manuel Minguez Cornelles
Year of birth uncertain 1641 deaths People from Madrid 17th-century Spanish people 17th-century engravers Spanish engravers Spanish Baroque painters {{printmaker-stub