Institutes of Oratory

An engraved portrait shows Gerardus Vossius, an elderly man with a white beard and mustache. He wears a large, stiff ruff collar and dark scholar's robes. He sits at a desk, holding an open book with his right hand. The portrait is heavily defaced. Aggressive, dark ink cross-hatching and scribbles cover the face and part of the collar, obscuring his features. Below the portrait is a title and two columns of verse.

GERARD VOSSIUS

Behold, reader, the wonder of the Palatine land, Vossius was born in the Electoral Palatinate, a territory of the Holy Roman Empire, near Heidelberg.
whom his own toil perfects in more than one art.
The passing day is enough for others. It is not enough for him.
He claims time for his studies even from the depth of night.

What does this writer not achieve? We admit openly
that the history of the ages could be written by no other hand.
As a boy and a youth he grew pale over his papers, as he did as a man,
and now as an old man he wishes to be no one else.

Crispijn van de Passe drew and engraved this from life. The Latin 'ad Vivum' indicates the artist created the likeness while in the presence of the living subject.