Nude Child Seated (1520/30): Artwork and History

Nude Child Seated (1520/30) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Jean de Gourmont French, 1506-1551.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Here Gourmont placed a nude child in front of his characteristic perspectival architecture, leaving only a few clues about his identity. The composition resembles both contemporary images of the Christ Child as well as the John the Baptist roundel on view nearby (1938.1502). Yet the oil lamp behind the figure and the statue in ancient garb emphasize the broken bricks and weeds growing throughout this collapsed structure. These details suggest that the roundel is a meditation on the ruins of Antiquity rather than the advent of Christianity.

Object facts

• Title: Nude Child Seated
• Date: 1520/30
• Artist attribution: Jean de Gourmont French, 1506-1551
• Place of origin: France
• Medium: Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
• Dimensions: Sheet, trimmed within platemark: 7.8 × 7.8 cm (3 1/8 × 3 1/8 in.)
• Type: Print
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1956.1062

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr.

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.