Art Institute of Chicago

The Holy Mountain, folio 3 from The Holy Mountain (Monte Sancto di Dio)

Baccio Baldini (Italian, c. 1436-1487)

Date

1477

Medium

Engraving in black with letterpress on verso, on ivory laid paper

Culture

Italy

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

A pair of prints from opposite sides of the Alps demonstrates the didactic capabilities of devotional printmaking. Both depict a sacred mountain that the soul must climb toward heaven. In Baccio Baldini’s extremely early engraved book illustration of an Italianate ladder of virtues, a monk successfully ascends, while a fashionable young man is dragged away by a demon representing worldly pleasures. Its thistle-laden German counterpart (1947.473) consists of banderole rungs filled with xylographic text and a crowned Christ waiting in glory. A nun kneeling at the bottom may have commissioned the print. She envisions a torturous journey up the steep incline, her twelve-step program advocating different Christian virtues: faith, generosity, modesty, constancy, justice, strength, will, patience, obedience, humility and at long last, divinity.

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