Description:
The second plate from the series of six (1593-94); Luke 1:39-45. Virgin visiting Elizabeth. Joseph (?) emerging from the background. Latin verses by F. Estius.
Label Text:
Marginal Latin text by Franco Estius:
Plena Deo virgo, coelesti Pnenmate foeta, / Cognatum Helisaben montana per aspera visit; / Exultat sterilis faecunda, exultat et infans / Iam tunc in gravidae genitricis ventre Prophetes. F. Estius.
The maiden, full of God, pregnant by the Holy Ghost, went through the barren mountains to visit her relative Elizabeth. The infertile pregnant woman rejoiced, as did the child, then already a prophet, in the pregnant mother’s womb.
Although the elongated female figure of the Virgin has been likened to Parmigianino’s figural style, Goltzius instead based this composition on a print of the same subject by Gijsbert van Veen after a painting by Federico Barocci, the altarpiece for the Chiesa Nuova in Rome. The bearded male figure at the background and the vast receding wall capped by an arched doorway confirm the source. One of Barocci’s most famous works, his Visitation reputedly drew crowds of the faithful, some of whom waited three days to view it. Gijsbert, brother to Rubens’s teacher, Otto van Veen, was active primarily in Brussels with work in Rome in 1588 and Venice in 1589. The swelling line he employed, visible especially in the drapery and ultimately derived from Cornelis Cort, served as inspiration for Goltzius both in this print and his later works.
(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+1979.46.2 |
