Subterranean Jail for the Stage (1788): Art, History and Details

Subterranean Jail for the Stage (1788) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Abel Schlicht (German, 1754–1826).

The work and its context

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

Trained as an architect, Abel Schlicht also designed stage sets for the Mannheim National Theater. An important forum for German cultural identity, the theater was one of the first companies to produce exclusively German-language plays, including those by beloved playwright Friedrich Schiller. Prisons were an especially popular drama subject in the 1700s, and sets would have featured in multiple productions. Here, Schlicht employed aquatint to render the gloomy space of one of his prison scenes. This technique enabled the artist to create the range of tones used to illuminate the background and plunge the foreground into darkness.

Object facts

• Title: Subterranean Jail for the Stage
• Date: 1788
• Creator attribution: Abel Schlicht (German, 1754–1826)
• Culture: Germany, 18th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching and aquatint
• Dimensions: Image: 40.9 x 56.6 cm (16 1/8 x 22 5/16 in.); Platemark: 49 x 63 cm (19 5/16 x 24 13/16 in.); Sheet: 54.2 x 71.2 cm (21 5/16 x 28 1/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 2003.23

A detail from the museum

Since none of his stage sets survive, Abel Schlicht’s prints serve as records of his lost designs.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

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.