The Circumcision
Medium
Pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, heightened with white opaque watercolor, over black chalk, on buff laid paper, laid down on buff laid card
Dimensions
Primary support: 27.7 × 27.6 cm (10 15/16 × 10 7/8 in.); Secondary support: 28.2 × 28.2 cm (11 1/8 × 11 1/8 in.)
Classification
pen and ink drawings
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
215326
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
In this dynamic drawing, Utrecht-based Abraham Bloemaert created a thoughtful compositional study for this scene from the early life of Christ. Bloemaert described the Virgin and the attendant figures in the foreground with expressive gestures—fingers spread and arms outstretched into space as if in an attempt to stop the circumcision taking place before them. A mass of faintly sketched figures in the background suggests how Bloemaert might have realized the composition in his next phase of exec...
About the Artist
Abraham Bloemaert · 1566–1651
Abraham Bloemaert (1566–1651) was born in Gorinchem in the Dutch Republic, the son of architect Cornelis Bloemaert, and grew up in Utrecht after the family relocated there in 1575. His early artistic formation took him to Paris for three years in the early 1580s, where he studied with several masters before returning to the Northern Netherlands to pursue his career. He settled permanently in Utrec...