Scene with Misericordia and Veritas in a Circle at Center
1580–1600
Medium
Engraving
Dimensions
Sheet: 5 1/2 × 5 1/2 in. (14 × 13.9 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(1)
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the late 16th century, engraver and publisher Theodor de Bry created *Scene with Misericordia Veritas in a Circle Center*, a compact engraving measuring just 5½ × 5½ inches. Dating to around 1580–1600, this print belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Elisha Whittelsey Collection and exemplifies de Bry's Northern Mannerist style—characterized by intricate line work and symbolic density. Renowned for his illustrations in travel books depicting the New World, de Bry here turned his precise intaglio technique to ornamental designs, blending fine hatching for texture with emblematic motifs...
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...