Giovanni Baglione
1625
Medium
Engraving on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Plate: 14.4 × 11.3 cm (5 11/16 × 4 1/2 in.); Sheet: 17.3 × 13.9 cm (6 13/16 × 5 1/2 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
109032
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Ottavio Leoni was renowned for his portraits, which he drew from life in colored chalk and later engraved. His advanced command of engraving and his use of stippling are evident in this print of the artist Giovanni Baglione, who decades earlier had implicated Leoni in a libel suit waged against Caravaggio. Baglione’s painting The Ecstasy of Saint Francis of Assisi of 1601 is also in the Art Institute collection (2002.378).
About the Artist
Ottavio Leoni · 1578–1630
Ottavio Leoni (c. 1578–1630) was a Roman portraitist whose incisive chalk drawings captured the faces of some of the most celebrated figures of his age. Born in Rome, Leoni trained in the city's vibrant artistic environment during the era of the Counter-Reformation, developing a speciality in portraiture at a time when likenesses of cardinals, poets, and nobles were in high demand. He became close...