St. Augustine and the Child on the Seashore (c. 1465–1469): Art, History and Details

St. Augustine and the Child on the Seashore (c. 1465–1469) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Master of the Nuremberg Passion (German, active mid-1400s).

The work and its context

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

In the foreground of this print, Saint Augustine sees a child spooning seawater into a hole in the sand, a metaphor for the saint’s struggle to understand divinity. The print may have been inspired by the strong presence of friars in Germany who followed Augustine’s teachings. Though the training of the engraver known as Master of the Nuremberg Passion remains unidentified, this engraving—the only known impression of this image—displays a goldsmith’s attention to ornamental detail. Bold contour lines are shaded with closely spaced cross-hatching, while curved lines depict water. Along the grass, the engraver left some ink on the plate’s surface (known as plate tone) to add shadow.

Object facts

• Title: St. Augustine and the Child on the Seashore
• Date: c. 1465–1469
• Creator attribution: Master of the Nuremberg Passion (German, active mid-1400s)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Dimensions: Image: 19.1 x 12.3 cm (7 1/2 x 4 13/16 in.); Sheet: 19.1 x 12.3 cm (7 1/2 x 4 13/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1984.55

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1984.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, no. 2 (April 1985): 163–207.

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.