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Martin Droeshout was an English engraver of Flemish descent, who is best known as illustrator of the title portrait for William Shakespeare's collected works, the First Folio of 1623, edited by John Heminges and Henry Condell, fellow actors of the.

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Martin Droeshout

17th-century English engraver of Flemish descent

Martin Droeshout (; April 1601 – c. 1650) was an English engraver of Flemish descent, who is best known as illustrator of the title portrait for William Shakespeare's collected works, the First Folio of 1623, edited by John Heminges and Henry Condell, fellow actors of the Bard. Nevertheless, Droeshout produced other more ambitious designs in his career.

Droeshout's artistic abilities are typically regarded as limited. The Shakespeare portrait shares many clumsy features with Droeshout's work as a whole. Benjamin Roland Lewis notes that "virtually all of Droeshout's work shows the same artistic defects. He was an engraver after the conventional manner, and not a creative artist."

Life

Droeshout was a member of a Flemish family of engravers who had migrated to England to avoid persecution for their Protestant beliefs. His father, Michael Droeshout, was a well established engraver, and his older brother, John, was also a member of the profession. His mother, Dominique Verrike, was his fath

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Droeshout portrait

Portrait of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout

Droeshout portrait
The Droeshout portrait of William Shakespeare as it appears on the title page of the first folio. This is the final, or second state, of the engraving.
Artist	Martin Droeshout
Year	1623
Type	Engraving
Dimensions	34 cm × 22.5 cm (13 in × 8.9 in)

The Droeshout portrait or Droeshout engraving is a portrait of William Shakespeare engraved by Martin Droeshout as the frontispiece for the title page of the First Folio collection of Shakespeare's plays, published in 1623. It is one of only two works of art definitively identifiable as a depiction of the poet; the other is the statue erected as his funeral monument in Shakespeare's home town of Stratford-upon-Avon. Both are posthumous.

While its role as a portrait frontispiece is typical of publications from the era, the exact circumstances surrounding the making of the engraving are unknown. It is uncertain which of two "Martin Droeshouts" created the engraving and it is not know

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Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Droeshout, Martin

DROESHOUT, MARTIN (fl. 1620–1651), engraver, belonged to a Netherlandish family, of which numerous members were settled in England. In the registers of the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, published by W. J. C. Moens, F.S.A. (Lymington, 1884), there are several entries concerning the family, the name being spelt Droeshout, Droshaut, Drossaert, Drussoit, &c. From these, and from a return of foreigners living in London in 1593 (Hamper, Life of Sir William Dugdale, appendix), it appears that about 1590 Michael Droeshout of Brussels, ‘a graver in copper, which he learned in Brussels,’ after sojourning in Antwerp, Friesland, and Zeeland, came to London, where John Droeshout, painter, and Mary, or Malcken, his wife, had been settled for some twenty years, who seem to have been his parents. Michael Droeshout, from whose hand there exists a curious allegorical engraving of the ‘Gunpowder Plot,’ married on 17 Aug. 1595 Susanna van der Ersbek of Ghent, and, among other children, was father of John Droes