Holy Family with St. Elizabeth and the Infant St. John the Baptist (c. 1500): Art, History and Details

Holy Family with St. Elizabeth and the Infant St. John the Baptist (c. 1500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Giovanni Antonio da Brescia (Italian, about 1460–about 1520); Andrea Mantegna (Italian, about 1431–1506).

The work and its context

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

By the 1490s, Andrea Mantegna stopped making his own engravings and hired skilled engravers, including Giovanni Antonio da Brescia. Mantegna provided detailed drawings, which were transferred to a copperplate using tracing paper. Da Brescia refined Mantegna’s tonal system by employing regular, parallel lines and a “return stroke,” or zigzag (evident on the Virgin’s cloak), to produce continuous areas of shadow. Da Brescia’s access to carbon-rich (thus, blacker) ink, his careful, clean wiping of the plate, and his likely use of a roller press resulted in a clear, polished presentation of Mantegna’s composition.

Object facts

• Title: Holy Family with St. Elizabeth and the Infant St. John the Baptist
• Date: c. 1500
• Creator attribution: Giovanni Antonio da Brescia (Italian, about 1460–about 1520); Andrea Mantegna (Italian, about 1431–1506)
• Culture: Italy, late 15th-early 16th Century
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Dimensions: Sheet: 29.2 x 25.7 cm (11 1/2 x 10 1/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1924.218

Collection credit

Gift of Ralph King

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.