Sacrifice to Priapus, the smaller plate (1501/03): Artwork and History

Sacrifice to Priapus, the smaller plate (1501/03) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Jacopo de' Barbari Italian, 1460/70-before July 1516.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The medical term priapism is derived from the name of the minor fertility god Priapus, whose permanently erect phallus is carefully washed in this sacrificial scene. Jacopo de’ Barbari also produced a larger engraving (1935.102 and 1956.999) in which the god’s phallus is obscured by smoke. The ceremonies depicted in these prints would have been intended to enhance the women’s fertility and their sons’ virility. The winged staff of Hermes doubles as the artist’s monogram in both prints; its placement on Priapus’s plinth may refer to the practice of erecting guideposts with Hermes’ portrait near roads to help lost travelers. Like the statue in this work, these pillars would have included sculpted, protruding genitalia, as in the Master of 1515’s engraving of Cleopatra (1951.374).

Object facts

• Title: Sacrifice to Priapus, the smaller plate
• Date: 1501/03
• Artist attribution: Jacopo de' Barbari Italian, 1460/70-before July 1516
• Place of origin: Italy
• Medium: Engraving on ivory laid paper
• Dimensions: 9.7 × 10.8 cm (3 7/8 × 4 5/16 in.)
• Type: Print
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1956.1002

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr.

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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.