8 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
which accompany and enrich the present series of historical illustrations, 
and add so much to their artistic interest. He was rather prolific in 
his compositions, for upwards of 600 of them were engraved by the 
Collaerts, De Parre, Hogenberg, the brothers Wierx, the Sadelers, 
Goltzius, and Galle. 
Let me direct attention to the second plate of the series. Its his- 
tory is, that on the first day of August, 1577, the company of Captain 
de Blois, Seigneur of Treslong, is chased from the citadel of Antwerp 
by the other three companies which formed the Walloon garrison ; this 
action is represented in a circular medallion, and ornamented as if 
framed, having emblematic figures of Foresight and Constancy above 
the medal; broken manacles hang at the sides, and underneath are for- 
cible Dutch verses describing and commemorating the event. 
Now a few years ago a splendid bronze medallion or plaque, cast 
as all such medals are, fell into my possession, which accurately repre- 
sents this circular medallion of De Vos. It is of the same size, and 
the few trifling differences between it and the engraving show that the 
latter was copied from this medal, and indeed is a very close copy in 
every respect. I was unaware of the real importance, or even historical 
value, of this medal, until I chanced to discover it in Sir W.S. 
Maxwell’s book; and greater still was my astonishment to find that 
Sir W. Maxwell himself, who appeared to have exhausted every pro- 
bable source of information, was utterly unaware of the existence 
of this important historical record. It is the undoubted original 
whence the medallic centre of the engraving commonly attributed to 
De Vos is derived, and is consequently one of a set of medals of 
which I fear the rest of the series have unfortunately perished, the 
only record of their existence being preserved in these plates. I am 
still ignorant by whom it and its lost companions were designed ; and 
the name of the patriot artist, who probably was an eye-witness of the 
scenes which he depicted, must for the present remain a mystery. It 
is possible they were the handiwork of De Vos himself. I am willing 
to admit his claim to the allegorical figures and accessory emblematic 
ornaments displayed for a framework around the engraved medals ; 
but the central work itself appears to me to point to other hands and 
different style of art. 
The conclusion I have arrived at is, that the series of seven plates 
which commemorate the delivery of Antwerp are undoubted copies 
engraved from a set of medals, or rather medallic plaques, much 
esteemed at the time when De Vos must have delineated them, and 
considered these patriotic designs of sufficient historical and artistic im- 
portance to require special allegorical illustration from his hand, and 
a series of descriptive verses in their praise and explanation; and I 
have the pleasure of exhibiting to the Academy, in proof of this con- 
clusion, the solitary example of these grand medals so far as we can 
ascertain, that has escaped destruction, and to claim for its as yet un- 
known designer the honour of having conceived and executed a series 
of brilliant, spirited pictures in metal, that have seldom been equalled 
in medallic art. 
