Victory Surrounded by Prisoners and Trophies (1552): Art, History and Details

Victory Surrounded by Prisoners and Trophies (1552) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Frans Floris the Elder (Flemish, 1509–1570); Hieronymus Cock.

The work and its context

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

In Victory Surrounded by Prisoners and Trophies, Frans Floris portrayed a standing female figure in the center, the personification of Victory, surrounded by a multitude of nudes and trophies (or spoils of war), which she has vanquished. The nudes were inspired by Roman friezes as well as figures that Floris had studied on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes during an extended trip to Italy in the 1540s. The etching is based on a painted composition (now lost) that Floris made a few years earlier to adorn a triumphal arch, one of numerous ephemeral arches featured in festive decorations throughout the city mounted for the visit of Charles V and the future Philip II in 1549.

Object facts

• Title: Victory Surrounded by Prisoners and Trophies
• Date: 1552
• Creator attribution: Frans Floris the Elder (Flemish, 1509–1570); Hieronymus Cock
• Culture: Netherlands, 16th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching with engraving
• Dimensions: Image: 31.7 x 44 cm (12 1/2 x 17 5/16 in.); Sheet: 31.7 x 44 cm (12 1/2 x 17 5/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 2020.224

A detail from the museum

This is the only etching that the Northern Renaissance painter Frans Floris ever made.

Collection credit

Carole W. and Charles B. Rosenblatt Endowment Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Graphische Sammlung Albertina, and Konrad Oberhuber. Zwischen Renaissance und Barock. Das Zeitalter von Bruegel und Bellange. 1967.
• Velde, C van de. Frans Floris 1519/20–1570): Leven en Werken, Brussels 1975.
• Jacoby, Joachim W., et al. The New Hollstein: German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts, 1400-1700. 1996.

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.