Jacob Folkema is a Dutch print worker and draftsman. He studied with his father, an engraver and goldsmith Johannes Jacobsz Folkema, and then with Bernard Picard in Amsterdam. Folkema created about 300 artworks. These are mostly portraits, topographical views, frontispieces, book illustrations, and vignettes. He usually did his works after paintings and drawings of other artists, but some of his prints, like, for example, illustrations for Cervantes were based on his drawings.

A copperplate engraving Birth of Meleager of the museum collection is made after a tapestry from the series of tapestries of the Royal palace after the legend from the eighth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses made by Charles Le Brun, a court painter and director of the royal tapestry manufactory.

The engraving shows Althea lying in bed. She is recovering after childbirth while Destiny Atropos throws a chuck to the fire and standing next to Althea fatal sisters are delivering the young mother the fatality of the newborn baby. Meleager will die as soon as the log burns out. According to the legend, the mother will save her son. She’ll take the burning chuck from the fire and Meleager, when he grows up will save his hometown from a monster. The whole scene is surrounded by a multifigured framework with plenty of tiny details, which continue the story of Meleager, till the scene of the Caledonian Boar hunt.