Maggs Bros. Ltd.

A copper plate, clearly used, for printing ephemeral, popular devotional tokens of the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Consolation, after an engraving venerated at the important pilgrimage site of Kevelaer, near the present-day German-Dutch border.

The origins and history of the pilgrimage site of Kevelaer are closely intertwined with seventeenth-century Dutch print culture. According to the story, Dutch merchant Hendrik Busman stopped at a cross in the countryside to pray before Christmas, 1641, and heard divine instruction to establish a shrine there. Seperately, his wife Mechel dreamt of a chapel with an engraving of Our Lady of Luxembourg - by which Our Lady of Consolation is also known, having been venerated in Luxembourg from the 1620s - displayed within it. Said to have just refused purchase of such prints for being too expensive, Mechel sought out an engraving of the Virgin as Our Lady of Consolation to be displayed in the chapel being built by her husband on the site. It is said to be the same print still on display in the (second, 1654) chapel in Kevelaer today; that print is dated 1640, and the town named is Luxembourg. Evidently the caption in the present plate was adapted and updated after the establishment of the Kevelaer shrine; otherwise the compositions and text are near identical.

The younger Michiel Cabbaey or Cabbaeij (1660-1722) of Antwerp is the best known engraver and artist bearing the surname, and his signature is frequently found on devotional prints produced from plates like these. We can find no other trace of Michiel Cabbaey 'le pere', as signed here; nor have we been able to find any surviving devotional cards printed from this plate.