Virgin and Child
1485/91
Medium
Engraving in black on buff laid paper
Dimensions
Image before remargining: 22.8 × 23.5 cm (9 × 9 5/16 in.); Sheet: 26.5 × 25 cm (10 7/16 × 9 7/8 in.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
15499
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The painter Andrea Mantegna’s engravings have been at the center of much art-historical controversy. Existing documents suggest that he commissioned other artists to engrave some of his prints for him, and that other engravings may have been made from Mantegna drawings. This monumental image of the humble Virgin Mary huddled with the infant Christ on the ground is one of the closest to Mantegna's engraving style. Whether or not he engraved it himself, the powerful diagonal strokes, the expressiv...
About the Artist
Andrea Mantegna · 1431–1506
Andrea Mantegna was born around 1431 near Padua, in the Venetian Republic, the son of a carpenter. At approximately age eleven he was taken into the workshop of the Paduan painter and antiquities collector Francesco Squarcione, who enrolled him as a guild member and immersed him in the study of Roman sculpture and classical Latin. Though Mantegna later claimed that Squarcione had exploited his lab...