Diogenes (c. 1524–27): Art, History and Details

Diogenes (c. 1524–27) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Ugo da Carpi (Italian, c. 1479–c. 1532); Parmigianino (Italian, 1503–1540).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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.

Object facts

• Title: Diogenes
• Date: c. 1524–27
• Creator attribution: Ugo da Carpi (Italian, c. 1479–c. 1532); Parmigianino (Italian, 1503–1540)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Print
• Technique: chiaroscuro woodcut (in four shades of green)
• Dimensions: Sheet: 47.7 x 34.7 cm (18 3/4 x 13 11/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Chiaroscuro
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1923.1052

A detail from the museum

In his Lives of the Artists (1550), Giorgio Vasari described Diogenes twice, praising it as Ugo da Carpi's most accomplished and beautiful print.

Collection credit

The Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Goldfarb, Hilliard T. “Chiaroscuro Woodcut Technique and Andrea Andreani.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 9 (November 1981): 307–330.
• Národní galerie v Praze, and Musée du Louvre. From Michelangelo to Callot : The Art of Mannerist Printmaking. Edited by Blanka Kubíková and Alena Volrábová. Prague: National Gallery in Prague, 2024.
• Gauna, Chiara. Disegni E Cultura Visiva a Metà Settecento: Documentare, Narrare, Mettere in Scena. Roma: Officina Libraria, 2025.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.