Description:
The third plate from the series of six (1593-94); Luke 2:16. Based on a painting by Jacopo Bassano. Latin verses by F. Estius.
Label Text:
Marginal Latin text by Franco Estius:
Coeli opifex, rerum dominus, Divûm atque hominum Rex / Nascitur en vilis tuguri sub paupere tecto, / Et praesepe tenet, quem non capit arduus aether, / Non mare, non tellus, non vasti machine mundi. F. Estius.
See, the creator of heaven, the lord of all things, the King of Gods and man, is born under the poor roof of a miserable hut and He who is greater than the high ether, the sea, the earth, than all the structures of the great universe, lies inside a manger.
"The Adoration of the Shepherds" as a night piece was immensely popular both in painting and print. Jacopo Bassano, in particular, delighted in depicting these darkened scenes with the shepherds represented as distorted peasant types. The dainty gesture with which the Virgin lifts Christ’s swaddling clothes and the burst of light from the angels appear in several of his variations on this subject, most prominently in his canvas of 1568, "Adoration of the Shepherds with Saints Victor and Corona ." Goltzius’s contemporaries, the Sadeler brothers, including Johan I, Aegidius, and Raphael, engraved reproductive prints after Bassano in a similarly striking tonal manner. Given the Sadeler’s strong connection to Bassano, Goltzius may have here intended to reference their style, although both his and their prints surfaced almost simultaneously.
(Susan Anderson, Ph.D., interim Mellon Coordinator of College Programs, 2009)
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+1979.46.3 |
