The Massacre of the Innocents

Agostino Veneziano (Agostino dei Musi)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This version of the Massacre comes closest to the second state of Marcantonio's print (Bartsch 18. See Landau and Parshall, 'The Renaissance Print', p.134). The impression they illustrate is in the MFA in Boston (Accession number P1217). However there are features of the Met impression that are odd. At the top left, the church tower and its spike more or less reach to the top edge of the image, whereas in the Boston impression, there are more cloud forms above the spike and therefore more space to the upper edge (also evident in the third state (see 'Marcantonio Raimondi, Raphael and the image multiplied', edited by Edward H. Wouk, 2016, p. 134). Furthermore, at bottom right, the two squares of the pavement in the Met impression are not divided and one of the central squares is not formed very satisfactorily. This seems to be either a copy or a falsified impression.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art