In 1660, the Flemish artist David Teniers published the Theatrum Pictorium, or ‘Theatre of Painting’, the first printed and illustrated catalogue of a major paintings collection. The collection belonged to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, governor of the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium) from 1646 to 1656. During that time, Leopold Wilhelm acquired more than 1,300 paintings spanning two centuries. The catalogue illustrates 243 of them, most from the Italian Renaissance. In preparation, Teniers painted copies in oil paint on small wooden panels working directly from the originals. He sent these small copies to specialist engravers who reproduced them as prints for the publication.

The Courtauld owns 14 of these copies, the largest number in any public collection. They are a valuable record of paintings that have since been altered or lost. They also show Teniers’s remarkable skill and the growing interest in the art of the past.