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View at the museum ↗Three Captives
Jacopo de' Barbaric. 1505
- Attribution
- Jacopo de' Barbari Italian, 1460/70-before July 1516
- Medium
- Engraving on cream laid paper
- Physical dimensions
- 16 × 10.1 cm (6 5/16 × 4 in.)
- Credit line
- The Amanda S. Johnson and Marion J. Livingston Endowment
Museum metadata is available under CC0. Image availability and rights are separate; consult the source record.
Source rights statement: Public domain
View the museum record ↗From the museum
Jacopo de’ Barbari was an Italian painter and printmaker active in the courts of Saxony, in present-day Germany, during the early 16th century. Albrecht Dürer met Barbari in Venice and was reportedly fascinated by Barbari’s idiosyncratic approach to human proportions, which led to Dürer’s own treatise on the subject (published in 1528). For this engraving Barbari depicted the three bound nude male figures each in a different pose, showing either the front, side, or back. Artists often adopted this conceit in order to prove their mastery of the body in three dimensions. Here, the figures’ languid, somewhat attenuated physiques evidence the prolonged length of their captivity.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0