St Jerome reading in the desert

One of the most famed printmakers of his day, the Dutchman Cornelis Cort (c. 1533-1578), was admired for his ability to translate tonal qualities into a black and white engraving. Cort accomplished this in part through an important technical innovation: an engraved line, cut with a tool (the burin) whose cutting edge comes to a sharp triangular point, to begin as a point, swell almost imperceptibly at the center, and narrow to a point again at the end. Cort exploited this quality of the burin line; by varying his pressure on the tool as he gouged the plate, he developed a flexible line that becomes thicker and thinner along its length, creating various degrees of darkness without adding additional lines.

In the first half of the sixteenth century, Marcantonio Raimondi had successfully translated the firm contours and plastic form of Raphael's mobile figures into engravings through the use of a systematic network of uniform lines. But Titian, an artist known for his colour rather than his drawing or design, sought a printmaker who could convey the less tangible atmosphere, colour, and light for which his paintings were famed, and specifically commissioned Cort to create engravings after several of his designs.

This engraving is based on Titian's painting <em>St Jerome in the Desert</em>, showing the saint reading a massive holy tome in a rocky landscape. A crucifix is nearby, as is the saint's lion, who guards the cave. Also featured is a jay, and a red squirrel perching on a tree branch. The present whereabouts of the painting are unknown.  The engraving dates from 1565-66, when Cort resided in Titian's house in Venice, and is part of the collection in the so-called King George IV album of Old Master prints, acquired by the Dominion Museum in 1910.

See: Metropolitan Museum of Art,  http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/356246

Dr Mark Stocker           Curator, Historical International Art         February 2017