Philip Galle

Dutch engraver and publisher (1537–1612)

Philip (or Philips) Galle (1537 – March 1612) was a Dutch publisher, best known for publishing old master prints, which he also produced as designer and engraver. He is especially known for his reproductive engravings of paintings.

Galle was born in Haarlem in the Netherlands, where he was a pupil of the humanist and engraver Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert. According to the RKD, he married Catharina van Rollant on 9 June 1569. They had five children who later became active as artists: Theodoor, Cornelis, Philips II, Justa (who married the engraver Adriaen Collaert) and Catharina (who married the engraver Karel de Mallery). In Haarlem he engraved several works of the Haarlem painter Maarten van Heemskerck. Even while he worked from 1557 for the Antwerp publisher Hieronymus Cock, he established himself as an independent printer in Haarlem in 1563, where he made prints after Johannes Stradanus and Maerten de Vos. who later died a gruesome death when he was beheaded and quartered in the Hague because of a conspiracy against the state, received his education when Galle still lived in Haarlem, while De Hooghe already worked for himself at the moment Galle moved to Antwerp. Galle's son Cornelis followed him as an engraver. Early works by Cornelis shows a striking similarity to the work of his father. Philip Galle's press and publishing house was a success. His pupils included his children, de Hooghe, Hendrick Goltzius, Jan Baptist Barbé, Pieter Nagel, the sons of his colleague Hans Collaert Adriaen and Jan, and Karel van Mallery. His sons and sons in law carried on the business at Antwerp through the seventeenth century.

As a resident of Antwerp, Galle witnessed numerous events of the Eighty Years War, notably the siege and looting of the town in 1576 by the Spaniards, called "The Spanish Fury". Galle wrote a Cort Verhael, a short chronicle of these events, which was published around the end of 1578. This booklet, which included several maps, was dedicated to archduke Matthias of Austria, a relative of the legal king Philip II of Spain, but not recognised by him as a landvoogd or supervisor of the country. A later print was dedicated to Jean de Bourgogne, lord of Froidmont or Fromont. This rather personal book, which was translated in several languages soon after its first publication, shows Galle as a peace loving person who intended to stay far away from the political and military turmoil of his era.

He died in Antwerp in March 1612.