Noah and the Animals Entering the Ark (1650–55): Art, History and Details

Noah and the Animals Entering the Ark (1650–55) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Italian, 1609–1664).

The work and its context

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

Animals were among Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione’s favorite subjects, leading him to frequently depict the biblical story of Noah’s Ark. Here, a group of men guide horses, deer, dogs, goats, and even guinea pigs toward the ark. After viewing etchings by his contemporary Rembrandt, whose work was not yet known widely in Italy, Castiglione recognized the potential of the medium. He emulated the Dutch master’s sketchy, draftsman-like approach and created a recession into space by combining deeply and lightly etched lines. The lush landscape, with its complicated layers of vegetation that swirl with movement, is a distinctive feature of Castiglione’s technique.

Object facts

• Title: Noah and the Animals Entering the Ark
• Date: 1650–55
• Creator attribution: Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Italian, 1609–1664)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1993.222

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland in honor of the Club's seventy-fifth anniversary

Further reading listed by the museum

• “1993 Annual Report.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 6 (July 1994): 143–218.

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.