Scene with a Warning Against Venereal Disease in a Circle at Center
Medium
Engraving
Dimensions
Sheet: 5 5/16 × 5 3/8 in. (13.5 × 13.6 cm)
Classification
Prints|Ornament & Architecture
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951
Accession Number
51.501.5794(4)
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the late 16th century, the Renaissance era when syphilis epidemics swept through Europe, this small engraving served as a stark public health warning. Created collaboratively by Flemish engraver Theodor de Bry, Johann Sadeler I, and artist Christoph Schwarz around 1580–1600, the print centers a cautionary circular scene amid vignettes of revelry. Men and women carouse with drinks, musical instruments, and dogs, evoking the lively brothel or tavern culture that artists used to moralize against vice and venereal disease. As an engraving on a modest 5 5/16 × 5 3/8 in. sheet, the work exemplif...
About the Artist
Theodor de Bry|Johann Sadeler I|Christoph Schwarz · 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...