The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine
1555/57
Medium
Engraving in black on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Plate/sheet: 32.5 × 25.1 cm (12 13/16 × 9 15/16 in.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
117614
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Giorgio Ghisi’s devotional print is influenced by the style of Fontainebleau artists. Ghisi may have known Francesco Primaticcio when they were both working in Mantua, and adapted his sculptural engraving style to the painter’s languid elegance. Primaticcio is not known for religious scenes; the original painting, now lost, would have been an unusual part of his oeuvre. The scene shows the infant Christ putting a ring on the finger of Saint Catherine of Siena, a 14th-century Dominican tertiary n...
About the Artist
Giorgio Ghisi · 1520–1582
Giorgio Ghisi (c. 1520–1582) was one of the most accomplished engravers of the Italian Renaissance, renowned for translating the monumental compositions of Raphael, Giulio Romano, and Michelangelo into the exacting medium of the burin. Born in Mantua, he trained in an environment shaped by the legacy of Giulio Romano's decoration of the Palazzo del Te, and the grandeur of that Mannerist tradition ...