The Delphic Sibyl
early 1570s
Medium
Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Plate: 56.6 × 43.2 cm (22 5/16 × 17 1/16 in.); Sheet: 57 × 43.9 cm (22 1/2 × 17 5/16 in.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
80019
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Giorgio Ghisi’s detailed reproductions helped make Michelangelo’s frescoes, like Raphael’s, some of the best-known High Renaissance monuments, despite their restricted location. As the Sistine Chapel ceiling was too large to include on one sheet, Ghisi produced a series of oversize engravings of seven prophets and five sibyls. Ghisi’s rendition of the Delphic sibyl in an architectural framework is significantly smaller than the actual painting. The spurious 1540 date at lower right may have been...
About the Artist
Giorgio Ghisi · 1520–1582
Giorgio Ghisi (c. 1520–1582) was one of the most accomplished engravers of the Italian Renaissance, renowned for translating the monumental compositions of Raphael, Giulio Romano, and Michelangelo into the exacting medium of the burin. Born in Mantua, he trained in an environment shaped by the legacy of Giulio Romano's decoration of the Palazzo del Te, and the grandeur of that Mannerist tradition ...