Pride and Madness (Orgeuille et Follie)
c. 1588
Medium
Engraving in black with brush and black wash on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image/sheet diameter, trimmed within platemark: Diam.: 12.1 cm (4 13/16 in.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
28695
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Especially luxurious prints were sometimes made with precious metal plates. The design of the roundel by the printer and goldsmith Theodor de Bry may also have been engraved into low silver bowls. Viewers must rotate the print to inspect the continuous design, which moves from Adam and Eve to the Apocalypse. The central visual gag is a double head showing a fool in this orientation and a satyr when upside down.
About the Artist
Theodor de Bry · 1528–1598
Theodor de Bry was born in 1528 in Liège, in what is now Belgium, into a family of jewelers and engravers. Trained as a goldsmith and copper-plate engraver — skills he refined under his grandfather, Thiry de Bry the Elder — he worked across several European cities before religious persecution forced him into exile. As a Protestant living under Spanish rule in the Southern Netherlands, de Bry was s...