Four Dancing Muses
Medium
Engraving
Dimensions
Plate: 10 1/4 × 13 3/4 in. (26 × 35 cm) Sheet: 14 in. × 19 1/16 in. (35.5 × 48.4 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1920
Accession Number
20.5.3
Tags
Art Historical Context
Behold *Four Dancing Muses*, captivating engraving from around 1497, created by the renowned Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mante in collaboration with engraver Gian Marco Cavalli. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department, this work measures an impressive plate size of 10¼ × 13¾ inches, showcasing the meticulous precision of late 15th-century printmaking. Mantegna, a master of the Paduan school, drew inspiration from classical antiquity, depicting four of the nine Muses—the divine patrons of arts and sciences—in joyful motion. Their graceful, rhythmic dance...
About the Artist
Andrea Mantegna|Gian Marco Cavalli · 1431–1506
Andrea Mantegna was born around 1431 near Padua, in the Venetian Republic, the son of a carpenter. At approximately age eleven he was taken into the workshop of the Paduan painter and antiquities collector Francesco Squarcione, who enrolled him as a guild member and immersed him in the study of Roman sculpture and classical Latin. Though Mantegna later claimed that Squarcione had exploited his lab...