print
- Museum number
- 1852,0612.105
- Description
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Witches' Sabbath, a copy in reverse after Baldung Grien; three naked women in the foreground before an inscribed urn; several staffs, bones and other objects on the ground, a cat on the left above a witch riding backwards on a goat and holding a fork; signed: 'LA' on a tablet hanging from the block at the far left and dated on the trunk of the tree. 1516
Colour woodcut printed from two blocks, the tone block in orange-brown
- Production date
- 1516
- Dimensions
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Height: 375 millimetres
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Width: 257 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- This is a high quality copy (in reverse and matching the size of the original) of one of the best-known woodcuts - dated 1510 - of the German painter and printmaker Hans Baldung Grien (Bartsch 55; Hollstein 235 II). Lucantonio adopted the same technique of colour printing in woodcuts used by the German master to simulate a particular type of contemporary German, and particularly Danube School, drawing in pen and ink heightened with white on a dark-coloured ground. It was identified as a work by Lucantonio by David Landau (Burlington Magazine, 125 (1983), p.173). See also Naoko Takahatake, 'The chiaroscuro woodcut in Renaissance Italy' Los Angeles 2018, cat.3, who points out that the composition has been taken line-for-line from Baldung's original, being reversed in the tracing. It is the earliest dated chiaroscuro woodcut by any Italian artist, and this is the only known impression.
For a discussion of Lucantonio's engravings see Hind D.III.4 (P&D 1846,0509.12).
Lit: C. Fowler, 'The currency of prints and drawings in the sixteenth century', Jenseits des disegno: Die Entstehung selbststandiger Zeichnungen in Deutschland und Italian im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, (Petersburg, 2018), pp.146-161.
For further information and bibliography see the entry by Naoko Takahatake on the online catalogue 'Atlante delle xilografie italiane del Rinascimento', ALU.0119.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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2015-16 Nov-Jan, BM, "German Renaissance Colour Woodcuts"
2018 3 Jun-16 Sep, USA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Chiaroscuro Woodcut in Renaissance Italy
2018-2019 14 Oct-16 Jan, USA, Washington, National Gallery of Art, Chiaroscuro Woodcut in Renaissance Italy
- Acquisition date
- 1852
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1852,0612.105
