Medium
etching on chine collé on wove paper
Dimensions
image: 24.9 × 19.8 cm (9 13/16 × 7 13/16 in.) sheet (chine collé): 33.6 × 25.6 cm (13 1/4 × 10 1/16 in.) mount: 45.6 × 33.1 cm (17 15/16 × 13 1/16 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Addie Burr Clark
Accession Number
1946.9.21
Art Historical Context
This exquisite etching, titled *Erasmus* (1863), captures the piercing gaze and scholarly demeanor of the Renaissance humanist Desiderius Erasmus as reinterpreted by French etcher Félix Bracquemond after Holbein the Younger's iconic 1523 portrait. Holbein, a master of the Northern Renaissance, for his precise, psychologically insightful portraits of Tudor England and European intellectuals, depicted Erasmus at the height of his influence as a philosopher, theologian, and critic the Church. Bracquemond's reproduction honors this legacy during the 19th-century revival of etching, a technique tha...