Saint Sebastian
1500/10
Medium
Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
14.9 × 10.3 cm (5 7/8 × 4 1/16 in.)
Classification
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
4379
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Nicoletto da Modena is best known for his idiosyncratic prints and engravings. His works are rendered in a style characterized by delicate cross-hatching and purity of line, with some similarity to the Ferrarese Tarocchi cards. Here the martyr Saint Sebastian is lashed rather serenely to a decorative column in a landscape setting with ancient ruins. Nicoletto often used a burr to produce the decorated surface effects, best seen in the darker areas of the ceiling architecture.
About the Artist
Nicoletto da Modena · 1500–1520
Nicoletto da Modena was an Italian engraver active in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, one of the most prolific and stylistically eclectic printmakers of the early Italian Renaissance. The details of his biography remain uncertain — his precise birth and death dates are unknown, and he is identified primarily through the body of prints that bear his name or monogram. He appears to...