Giulio Campagnola

Giulio Campagnola experimented with stippling—a technique of making small flicks and dots with the point of the burin—to create a soft, velvety, tonal composition with subtle transitions akin to sfumato in oil painting. Campagnola’s exquisite dot-work relied on a painter’s sense for shading and color and his idiosyncratic style thus responded to paintings by his Venetian contemporaries. Campagnola also quoted one of Dürer’s landscapes in the background, distinguished by the vertical lines that denote the water’s reflection. Unlike Marcantonio’s regular system of line, Giulio’s system could not be easily duplicated by other engravers.

Based on a now lost composition attributed variously to Giorgione and to Titian, the engraving depicts the meeting between Christ and the woman of Samaria at an impressively classical well. According to the Gospel of John, Christ asked the woman for a drink of water, which he called everlasting life, and revealed himself to her as the Messiah.