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Seleucus and His Son
Wenceslaus Hollar (after Giulio Pippi, called Giulio Romano (Italian, c. 1499-1546))
1637
- Medium
- Etching on ivory laid paper
- Classification
- Dimensions
- 28.3 × 37.3 cm (11 3/16 × 14 11/16 in.)
- Culture
- Bohemia
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- The Wallace L. DeWolf and Joseph Brooks Fair Collections
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Wenceslaus Hollar dedicated this etching to his patron Thomas Howard, the 14th Earl of Arundel, and documented much of Howard’s art collection in print. This image depicts the epitome of ancient justice, Seleucus, who offered one of his own eyes to save his adulterous son from losing both. The print reproduces Giulio Romano’s fresco in the Palazzo del Te in Mantua— which supplied the architectural shape of the image. However, it is likely that Hollar used not an original preparatory drawing but a copy that was in Arundel’s collection and is now in the British Museum.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
