The Penance of Saint John Chrysostom
c. 1510
Medium
Engraving on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Plate: 14.3 × 11.5 cm (5 11/16 × 4 9/16 in.); Sheet: 14.9 × 11.6 cm (5 7/8 × 4 5/8 in.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
68511
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This luminous unique impression suggests a more linear version of Campagnola’s dappled, early stipple engraving style, characterized by many small dots in different sizes, volumes, and shades. The composition tells an apocryphal legend of Saint John Chrysostom, in which the saint, living as a hermit, seduces and impregnates the daughter of an emperor. Shocked by his own actions, John throws the princess from a cliff and vows never to rise from the ground in penance for his misdeeds. After the pr...
About the Artist
Giulio Campagnola · 1482–1515
Giulio Campagnola (c. 1482–c. 1515) was born in Padua, within the Republic of Venice, to Girolamo Campagnola, a noted humanist scholar and writer who may have been an amateur painter. Exceptionally gifted from youth, by age fifteen he was praised as a poet, musician, linguist in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and skilled in painting, engraving, and gem-cutting, prompting efforts to secure him a positio...