Venus on a half-shell, holding fabric over her head
17th century
Medium
Engraving (reverse copy)
Dimensions
Sheet: 8 3/16 × 5 5/8 in. (20.8 × 14.3 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951
Accession Number
51.501.3779
Tags
Art Historical Context
This delicate 17th-century engraving by Cherubino Alberti captures Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty, balanced gracefully on a scallop shell while lifting a length of fabric above her head. Alberti, an Italian printmaker known for his refined reproductive engravings, worked in the tradition of translating celebrated compositions into widely accessible prints. The work’s modest scale—just over eight inches tall—belies the careful attention to line and shading that conveys both the figure’s soft contours and the shell’s textured surface. As a reverse copy, the engraving mirrors an ear...
About the Artist
Cherubino Alberti (Zaccaria Mattia) · 1553–1615
Cherubino Alberti (1553–1615), also known by his birth name Zaccaria Mattia, was an Italian engraver and painter active in Rome during the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Born in Borgo San Sepolcro in Tuscany, he came from an artistically inclined family and received training that equipped him for work in both painting and the reproductive graphic arts. It was as a printmaker, however,...