‘Thus am I accustomed to treat friends’

This contribution focuses on a superb Dutch wine glass or roemer engraved by Maria Roemers Visscher (‘Tesselschade’) with the Latin motto, Sic Soleo Amicos (‘Thus am I accustomed to treat friends’). Roemers’ roemer is shown actively to have participated in a coterie of cultured men and women initially centred on her father Roemer Pieterszoon Visscher, whose friendly gatherings in the 1610s were animated by wine, song, emblems, poetry and comic and satirical literature. The roemer’s inscription characterises it as a speaking subject within this milieu and evokes the intersubjective character of friendships that were enacted through puns, metaphors, ironic wit and at times amorous play. The performance of mixed friendship through the gendered artistic practice of glass-engraving is compared with the pleasurable game of connecting word and image in emblems. Such activities both gave rein to, and reined in, embodied friendships between elite women and men within a pleasure-loving yet patriarchal society.