Seventeenth-Century Poet
1965
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
etching and aquatint in black on wove paper
Dimensions
plate: 45.09 × 37.47 cm (17 3/4 × 14 3/4 in.) sheet: 76.2 × 56.2 cm (30 × 22 1/8 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Jay Finkel
Accession Number
2013.121.65
Art Historical Context
**Seventeenth-Century Poet** Leonard Baskin, 1965 Etching and aquatint black on wove paperNational Gallery of Art,, D.C. Leonard Baskin’s *Seventeenth-Century Poet* (1965) captures the brooding intensity of a literary figure from the Baroque era through the artist’s masterful printmaking. Baskin (1922–2000), a prominent American sculptor, illustrator, and printmaker, inspiration from Renaissance and Mannerist traditions, infusing his works with dramatic humanism and a focus on the human condition. This etching and aquatint, measuring 45.09 × 37.47 cm on its plate, evokes the contemplati...
About the Artist
Leonard Baskin
Leonard Baskin (1922–2000) was a towering figure in American art, renowned for his monumental sculptures, powerful woodcuts, and intricate book illustrations that grappled with the human condition's darker facets. Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to a family of rabbis, he moved to Brooklyn's Jewish Orthodox Williamsburg neighborhood at age seven. Vowing to become a sculptor at 15, Baskin apprent...