Two Lovers with Pan, from "Ex Antiquis Cameorum et Gemmae Delineata/ Liber Secundus/et ab Enea Vico Parmen Incis"
Medium
Engraving; third state
Dimensions
plate: 3 7/16 x 4 7/8 in. (8.8 x 12.4 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1949
Accession Number
49.97.408
Tags
Art Historical Context
This engraving, titled *Two Lovers with Pan*, comes from a seventeenth-century publication reproducing ancient cameos and gems. Created after designs by Enea Vico and others, it forms part of *Ex Antiquis Cameorum et Gemmae Delineata*, a volume that documented classical carved stones for scholars and collectors across Europe. The scene captures an intimate moment between nude figures accompanied by Pan, the goat-legged god of the wild, blending sensuality with mythological symbolism popular in Renaissance and Baroque interpretations of antiquity. As an engraving in its third state, the work h...
About the Artist
Enea Vico|Francesco Angeloni|Battista Franco|Philippe Thomassin|Anonymous, Italian, 16th century · 1523–1567
Enea Vico (1523–1567) was born in Parma and came of age during the final, energetic decades of Italian Renaissance printmaking. By 1541 he had made his way to Rome, where he entered the orbit of the engraver and publisher Tommaso Barlacchi and began his professional career. In Rome, Vico encountered the work of the most celebrated printmakers of the preceding generation—Marcantonio Raimondi, Agost...