Label Text:
"Potiphar’s Wife Accusing Joseph" is a very fine impression of a rare engraving by one of the greatest figures in Renaissance graphic art: the sixteenth-century Netherlandish printmaker, painter, and draftsman Lucas van Leyden, who is known to us as Lucas (some Renaissance artists are referred to by their first name).
A child prodigy, Lucas engraved "Potiphar’s Wife" at the height of his early maturity, demonstrating his technical virtuosity and tendency for unconventional subjects from the book of Genesis rather than the New Testament.
At center left, surrounded by her retinue, Potiphar’s wife kneels before her husband while holding a garment, the cloak of Joseph, which she offers, falsely, as proof of her seduction. At right, her husband, Potiphar—the pharaoh’s captain, who had placed Joseph in charge of the household—listens to his wife’s charges. Gazing heavenward, he silences a companion with a nudge of his foot and a gesture of his hand. Here, Lucas captures facial expressions, organizes a complex composition, and renders volumetric space—with a sophisticated combination of architectural exterior and landscape elements—on a large scale. To accomplish this, he used the burin to cut shallow lines in the plate, hair-thin and frequently interrupted (the result of leaving characteristic blotches or blanks in the plate). The relatively dry ink that Lucas preferred did not produce the sharp glossy black lines for which Dürer is known, as shown in his work to the left. Instead, Lucas sought a subtler palette of silvery-gray tones placed in harmonious, rather than sharply contrasting, arrangements.
MW, 2013
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2012.01 |
