Emblem with Blank Heraldic Shield, folio 156 from the Anthologia Gnomonica
1579, assembled into portfolio 1937
Medium
Woodcut and letterpress in black on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 7.8 × 11 cm (3 1/8 × 4 3/8 in.); Image/text: 8 × 13 cm (3 3/16 × 5 1/8 in.); Sheet: 10 × 15.5 cm (3 15/16 × 6 1/8 in.)
Classification
woodcut
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
132197
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
When is a book illustration not a book illustration? These leaves (1938.86.27 and 1938.88.52) were removed from their original texts in the early twentieth century and grouped into portfolios celebrating fifteenth and sixteenth-century book illustrations. Yet the Saint Otilia bears an early owner’s mark from her previous life, and this viewer or another early user has augmented the saint’s halo; the border of the altar showing Christ’s Resurrection; and the muscles on the soul escaping the mouth...
About the Artist
Jost Amman · 1539–1591
Jost Amman (1539–1591) was a Swiss-born woodcut designer, engraver, and illustrator who became one of the most prolific and influential graphic artists of sixteenth-century Germany, producing an output of extraordinary range and technical virtuosity that shaped the visual culture of the later Reformation era. Born in Zurich, Amman moved to Nuremberg around 1560, the city that had been the center o...