Virgin and Child in the Clouds

Date1641

MediumEtching and drypoint

Credit LineGift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward W. Lane III

Dimensions6 3/8 x 4 1/8 in. (16.2 x 10.5 cm)

Object number2004.063.001

Label TextIn seventeenth-century Holland, Rembrandt became the most inventive printmaker since Albrecht Dürer. While looking to the work of his predecessors (he collected prints by Dürer, Lucas van Leyden, and Jacques Callot among others), Rembrandt drew on tradition only in order to transform it through his intrepidly experimental etching technique. The model for the Virgin and Child in the Clouds is a circa 1581 etching by the Italian painter Federico Barocci, but Rembrandt translated it into his own vernacular. Characteristically revealing his working methods, he also left his initial attempt at the composition, the upside down face on the Virgin's left knee, in plain view.
Exhibition HistoryInvention and Revival: Northern European Prints, Michael C. Carlos Museum, February 12 - May 15, 2005
Old Masters: Highlights of the Works on Paper Collection, Michael C. Carlos Museum, August 15 - December 6, 2009
The Eye, The Mind, and the Heart: In Honor of Clark Poling, Michael C. Carlos Museum, January 15 - March 5, 2022
Published ReferencesMCCM Newsletter, September - November 2009.
Michael C. Carlos Museum: Highlights of the Collections (Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, 2011), 136-37.

ProvenanceEx coll. Joseph Daniel Bohm (1794-1865), Vienna, Austria. Possibly ex coll. Heinrich Buttstaedt (died 1876 or later), Germany. Ex coll. Michael G. Berolzheimer (1866-1942), Germany and United States, acquired 1910-1933. Thence by descent. Purchased by MCCM from Childs Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts.

Catalogue raisonnéBartsch 61, Seidlitz 61, Hind 186, BB 41-H

Status

Not on view

Collections