Volcxken Diericx

Volcxken Diericx (c. 1525 – 1600) was a Flemish print maker and publisher. She and her husband Hieronymus Cock founded an important publishing house in Antwerp, which she continued to operate after the death of her husband.

Biography She was probably from Antwerp like her husband Hieronymus Cock. Together they founded the publishing house Aux Quatre Vents (The Four Winds), for which they received a patent on 11 January 1548.

Aux Quatre Vents became a prestigious publishing house that published about 2,000 prints during its half century of existence. Cock and Diericx specialized in high quality etchings and engravings, made by the best European specialists, offered a wide variety in subject selection, and exported to all corners of the world. Diericx is known for republishing these works as well as contracting Hendrik Goltzius during his first few years in Haarlem (1577–1582).

After the death of her husband in 1570 all the prints published by their publishing house carried the sentence Aux Quatre Vents without the name of her husband Cock. She remarried and she and her second husband Lambrecht Bottin are mentioned along with Christophe Plantin at the top of a list of print makers and print sellers in Antwerp, which was compiled between 1577 and 1580.

Diericx died in Antwerp and left over 1,600 copper plates and a large inventory of prints in her estate.