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Unknown Maker, French

Venus and Adonis

Maker

Unknown Maker, French

Culture

French, or, Flemish

Title

Venus and Adonis

Year

late 1600s-early 1700s

Medium

  • Pen and brush and brown ink (possibly black originally) over graphite

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

  • Pen and brush and brown ink (possibly black originally) over graphite

Materials

wash technique

Dimensions

24.8 x 18.4 cm (9 3/4 x 7 1/4 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Watermark: GR under a Crown (between chainlines)

Inscribed on previous mat: "Jordaens éleve de rubens"

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Gift of Mrs. Gustav Radeke

Object Number

20.434

Type

  • Drawings and Watercolors

Exhibition History

A Matter of Tone
Chiaroscuro Woodblock Prints, 1520-1800
Jul 16, 2004 – Oct 31, 2004

Label copy

Chiaroscuro prints were initially developed to evoke tonal drawings, but such drawings were made in very different styles across the period. Parmigianino’s Antique Head reveals subtle tonal washes and his characteristic cross-hatching. The 16th-century image of St. Michael is typical of a drawing worked with red chalk wash as the middle ground and defined with lighter and darker washes of brown ink and additional white highlights. The highlights are translated in the chiaroscuro prints into the negative space of the white paper. The later drawing, attributed to Benedetto Luti, allows the white of the paper to represent the highlights while middle tones are created by clearly worked layers of gray ink, comparable to the chiaroscuro prints in gray tones by Hendrik Goltzius.

The Study of an Antique Head of Julius Caesar is one of a group of drawings by Parmigianino from the same sculpture bust, an earlier collector in the 17th or 18th century mistakenly attributed the drawing as being by Leonardo da Vinci.

Prints and Drawings with a Classical Reference
Dec 15, 1965 – Jan 09, 1966

Image use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use.

Public Domain This object is in the Public Domain and available under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

Tombstone

Unknown Maker, French
Venus and Adonis, late 1600s-early 1700s
Pen and brush and brown ink (possibly black originally) over graphite
24.8 x 18.4 cm (9 3/4 x 7 1/4 inches)
Gift of Mrs. Gustav Radeke 20.434

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