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Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin and Christ Child
Girolamo da Carpi (Girolamo Sellari; Italian, c. 1501–1556)
c. 1535
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 47 × 34 cm (18 9/16 × 13 7/16 in.); Framed: 69.6 × 57.2 × 5.8 cm (27 3/8 × 22 1/2 × 2 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- Italy
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Purchased with funds provided by the Old Masters Society
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Girolamo da Carpi painted this intimate work for the Este family of Ferrara, Italy; it adorned the oratory chapel of their palace. The painting shows Saint Luke drawing the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus while Joseph watches from a doorway. The infant appears agitated, as if he possesses foreknowledge of his death: He is reacting to the spear-like yarn winder, an attribute of the Three Fates from Greek mythology and a symbol of death in Christian contexts as well.
The painting’s distinguished history extends beyond the Estes. It later came into the possession of two Roman cardinals, two Roman princes, the English Duke of Westminster, Baron Alfred de Rothschild, and the Earl of Carnavon, who famously financed the excavation of King Tutankhamen’s tomb.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
