021

  • Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl

  • ca. 1528
  • After Parmigianino (Italian 1503-ca. 1540) by Antonio da Trento (Italian ca. 1508-ca. 1550)
  • Chiaroscuro woodblock print in brown and olive inks, shield watermark
  • 34.6 x 26.8 cm., 13-5/8 x 10-9/16" image
  • Gift of Harris Schrank in Tribute to Dr. Catherine Goebel, Paul A. Anderson Art Chair in the Arts, Paul A. Anderson History Collection, Augustana College 2007.3

Essay by Margaret Morse, Associate Professor of Art History

In the late 1520s, the Emilian painter Parmigianino provided drawings to the woodcutter Antonio da Trento to be translated into prints. The chiaroscuro woodcut is a printmaking technique that attempts to transfer the tonal effects of painting and drawing to the printed medium. Instead of using a single block to create the entire image, artists making a chiaroscuro woodcut employ a different woodblock for each variation of tone or color (Wechsler 24 and 787). In the Parmigianino print, the line block bearing the basics of the design of figures and architecture was laid down first in dark olive ink. The block bearing the middle gray tone, which covers almost the entire composition, followed. To form the highlights, Antonio da Trento left the white color of the paper exposed (Harris Schrank).

Sibyls held great interest during the Renaissance as humanists sought to reconcile the glories of the pagan past with the Christian present. Clairvoyant women of the ancient world who predicted future events, sibyls were recast by early Christian scholars as foreseers of the coming of Christ, a role they continued to play in the Renaissance. According to legend, when the Emperor Augustus approached the Tiburtine sibyl about his deification, she revealed to him a vision of the Virgin and Christ child in glory to alert him to a deity higher than any pagan god. The classical architecture of the scene in Parmigianino's print recalls ancient Rome, but the plants overtaking the columns on the right imply the impending decline of the pagan world, trounced by a new religious era signaled in the sibyl's vision.

The artistic collaboration between Parmigianino and Antonio da Trento was short lived. The artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) recounts that the woodcutter stole all of the drawings, engravings, and woodcuts stored by the painter in a trunk and was never seen again. While Parmigianino retrieved the actual metal plates and woodblocks, his drawings were gone for good. Vasari goes on to suggest that the event irrevocably damaged Parmigianino and caused him to abandon printmaking altogether, but the painter continued to produce drawings, many of which were transferred into prints after his death (Vasari Volume 3: 787).