Plate 5: The Tomb of Mausolus, from 'The Seven Wonders of The World'

Art Historical Context

Antonio Tempesta’s 1608 etching *Plate 5: The Tomb of Mausolus* brings to life one of antiquity’s most celebrated monuments as part of his series on the Seven Wonders of the World. Created in Rome during the early Baroque period, the print shows the grand Mausoleum at Halicarnassus rising in stepped tiers, its sculptural decoration and crowning chariot clearly delineated. Tempesta, known for his dynamic etchings of processions, battles, and historical subjects, uses fine, energetic lines to convey both architectural scale and the bustling activity around the tomb, including horses, attendants, and dogs that animate the scene. Etching was especially suited to such reproductive series, allowing Tempesta to circulate images of distant wonders to a wide European audience hungry for knowledge of the classical past. By rendering the mausoleum—built for King Mausolus in the fourth century BCE and long vanished by Tempesta’s day—the artist participated in the Renaissance revival of ancient marvels, blending archaeological imagination with dramatic visual storytelling. Today in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection, this modest sheet (roughly 9 by 11 inches) preserves not only a lost wonder but also the seventeenth-century fascination with history, travel, and the power of print to make the remote vividly present.

About the Artist

Antonio Tempesta · 1555–1630

Antonio Tempesta (1555–1630), known as 'Il Tempestino,' was a Florentine painter and printmaker whose extraordinary output of approximately 1,700 etchings made him one of the most influential printmakers of the early Baroque period. Born in Florence and trained under Santi di Tito and the Flemish master Joannes Stradanus, he enrolled in the Accademia del Disegno in 1576 before relocating to Rome i...