print
- Museum number
- H,3.172
- Title
- Series: The Life of the Virgin
- Description
-
The Presentation of Christ in the temple, with the infant Christ held by Simeon behind the altar on the right; a woman kneeling in front of the altar, offering a dove in a cage as sacrifice, behind her standing the Virgin and St Joseph
Engraving
- Production date
- 1505-1506 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 290 millimetres
-
Width: 205 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- After a series woodcuts of the 'Life of the Virgin' by Albrecht Dürer. For impressions by Dürer on same subject see E.2.175; 1895,0122.633 and for an impression with latin text on verso see 1895,0122.653.
Entry from 'Dürer and his Legacy', exh.cat.BM, 2002, no. 201:
'The most important printmaker of the Italian Renaissance, Marcantonio effectively established engraving as a reproductive medium and was responsible for the widespread dissemination of Raphael’s designs. He was also the most prolific copyist of Dürer’s engravings and woodcuts of the early sixteenth century and thereby significantly increased Dürer’s fame within Italy. Some seventy-four of his engravings were entirely based on Dürer’s prints and he frequently borrowed landscape motifs from Dürer in his early work.
This is an example from a set of engraved copies after Dürer’s seventeen woodcuts of the 'Life of the Virgin' that were issued before Dürer’s second trip to Italy. Vasari recorded in 1568 that Dürer travelled to Venice with the express purpose of taking legal action against Marcantonio for selling forgeries of his work, but that he only received an agreement that his monogram should not be used (see Vasari, v, p.7). Although the details of Vasari’s account are inaccurate, Dürer was certainly concerned enough about the circulation of fraudulent copies to add a warning against ‘thieves and imitators of other people’s labour’ at the end of each of his woodcut series published in 1511, and Marcantonio did not add the AD monogram to his later copies of Dürer’s prints, which include a set after the 'Small Passion'.'
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2023 23 Jan-4 June, BM, 'Venice 1500: Jacopo de' Barbari and the rise of printmaking'
- Acquisition date
- 1799
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- H,3.172
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: 1973.U.160
