Saint Deicolus and the Boar (1747–48): Art, History and Details

Saint Deicolus and the Boar (1747–48) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner (German, 1712–1761).

The work and its context

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

German artist Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner's innovations in rococo design are magnificently demonstrated in this sheet showing the story of Saint Deicolus and the Boar. The format of the work imitates that of a decorative cartouche, an ornamental framework surrounding an open field usually reserved for an inscription or emblem. Baumgartner ingeniously adapted the cartouche form for this scene: the framing elements seem to grow out of the landscape but are clearly artificial, and have the appearance of exuberant metalwork intertwined with vegetation and rocks. Deicolus was an Irish saint who founded an abbey in the Burgundy region of France. Baumgartner shows an incident in which Deicolus saved a boar from the hunting party of the ruler Clotaire II. The highly finished drawing on blue paper was made as a design for print from a suite combining saints with depictions of the hunt.

Object facts

• Title: Saint Deicolus and the Boar
• Date: 1747–48
• Creator attribution: Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner (German, 1712–1761)
• Culture: Germany, 18th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown and gray inks and brush and gray wash heightened with white gouache; incised, verso coated with red chalk
• Dimensions: Sheet: 52.2 x 73.5 cm (20 9/16 x 28 15/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - German
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1967.22

A detail from the museum

The rarely depicted St. Deicolus was an Irish monk who lived in the 600s and was known for his retreat to a hermitage in a forest.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• C.G. Boerner (Firm), and Ausstellung. Ausgewählte Druckgraphik und Handzeichnungen aus vier Jahrhunderten. 1966.
• C.G. Boerner (Firm). Handzeichnungen vor 1900. Düsseldorf: Boerner, 1966.
• “Year in Review.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 54, no. 10 (December 1967): 302–346.

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.