Paradigmata Graphices Variorum Artificum, Per Ioh. Episcopium.

This is an enlarged edition of the Paradigmata, possibly put together after Bisschop's death. The first edition (1671) contained a title-page, dedication to Jan Six and twenty-five numbered plates; this edition lacks the title-page and dedication but has an engraved title-plate by Lairesse and an additional thirty-two numbered plates.

Having introduced students to ancient sculpture in his Signorum Veterum Icones (1668-9), Bisschop in his Paradigmata intended to present them with model drawings by Italian artists influenced by ancient art; but the work was issued incomplete. In his dedication to Six Bisschop writes, 'The work will be in four parts: the first on the human body, the whole and the parts; the second on whole figures; the third on various gestures and actions; the last on the uniting of several figures ... The second part, completed before the others, is published first'. The additional plates of the present edition do not complete the work but seem to be of a miscellaneous character.

Bisschop intended, as the dedication declares, to issue a manual different from those of Palma Giovane, Fialetti, Ribera and Bloemaert, in that it would display the work of not one but several masters, who should stimulate Dutch artists to turn from depicting 'beggars, foul junketings and thighs disfigured by garters' and improve their taste.

Bisschop's drawing books won high acclaim. In 1789 Benjamin West wrote to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'Bisschop was a good draftsman and an excellent etcher ... and every artist's shelf should support and protect his volume of drawings as an inestimable treasure' (Note included in the Bisschop album 'Studies from the antique' in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London).