Diogenes

Description

Diogenes was a Greek philosopher who lived during the 300s BC. The bird in the background alludes to his cynical response to Plato, who had described man as a featherless biped. Diogenes plucked a rooster and brought it to Plato’s school, exclaiming, “Here is Plato’s man!” Ugo da Carpi was influential in the development of the chiaroscuro woodcut in Italy. The term chiaroscuro combines the Italian words chiaro (light) and scuro (dark). Invented to emulate drawings with light and dark pigments on tinted paper, the printing technique uses multiple woodblocks to layer different tones of color. This example, considered a masterpiece of Renaissance printmaking, uses four shades of green to render tonal values; the paper provides the lightest color in the composition.

Provenance

(Goodspeed's Bookshop, Boston, MA) (?-1923); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (November 16, 1923)

Diogenes

Ugo da Carpi

c. 1524–27

Accession Number

1923.1052

Medium

chiaroscuro woodcut (in four shades of green)

Dimensions

Sheet: 47.7 x 34.7 cm (18 3/4 x 13 11/16 in.)

Classification

Print

Museum

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland, United States

Credit Line

The Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund