Art Institute of Chicago

Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata

Federico Barocci

Date

c. 1581

Medium

Etching on cream laid paper

Culture

Italy

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

A painter and skilled engraver, Federico Barocci was an experimental etcher. Here he explored the effects of light and shade by sequentially stopping out sections of the plate with a wax resist while immersing it in acid. The areas protected by the resist were not etched, while the parts that were exposed to the acid throughout the entire process were etched with dark, thick lines. The suggestive, hallucinatory effect of the resulting print dramatizes the saint’s moment of revelation, as the details of the terrestrial world fade into the pale background.

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