Presentation of Christ (c. 1502): Artwork and History

Presentation of Christ (c. 1502) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as After Lorenzo di Ottavio Costa Italian, c. 1460-1535.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Born in Ferrara, Costa studied there with Cosimo Tura before moving to Bologna in the early 1480s. He traveled throughout Italy, ultimately settling in Mantua as court artist to the powerful Gonzaga family. This rich engraving of the biblical account of Christ’s introduction to the teachers at the temple in Jerusalem is after a 1502 painting by Costa for the church of Santa Maria della Vita in Bologna. It is unclear whether this work was engraved by the artist himself or was copied by an anonymous Bolognese engraver.

Object facts

• Title: Presentation of Christ
• Date: c. 1502
• Artist attribution: After Lorenzo di Ottavio Costa Italian, c. 1460-1535
• Place of origin: Italy
• Medium: Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
• Dimensions: 15.5 × 13.2 cm (6 1/8 × 5 1/4 in.)
• Type: Print
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1956.995

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr.

View the original

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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.