Madonna Enthroned with Eight Angels (1467): Art, History and Details

Madonna Enthroned with Eight Angels (1467) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Master ES (German, active 1450–67).

The work and its context

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

The first engraver to date and monogram his works (with an “ES”), and perhaps the first to use a specialized roller press, Master ES came from southern Germany, along the Rhine River. His technique shows goldsmith training. Some of the marks were cut with broad and thin burins (steel engraving tools). Others were made with a ring-shaped punch (a steel tool struck with a hammer). These are visible as small circles on the Virgin Mary’s hem and the textured background, imitating a textile, behind her. The scene may depict a miraculous statue of the Virgin that was then at a Swiss Benedictine monastery. The engraver may have been commissioned by the church to make the image to appeal to pilgrims. The unusual shapes at the top of the canopy are the print’s date: "1467."

Object facts

• Title: Madonna Enthroned with Eight Angels
• Date: 1467
• Creator attribution: Master ES (German, active 1450–67)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1948.170

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Francis, Henry. "The Engravings of the Master E.S." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 38, no. 9 (November 1951): 307-211.
• Shestack, Alan. Master E S, Five Hundredth Anniversary Exhibition, September Fifth Through October Third, Philadelphia Museum of Art. [Philadelphia]: [Philadelphia Museum of Art], 1967.
• Martin Nagy, Rebecca. Textiles in Daily Life in the Middle Ages. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1985.

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.