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Orpheus seated playing his lyre, and charming the animals

ca. 1500–20
Not on view
The earliest known Italian engravings are niello prints. The design was taken from a small, incised silver plaque the engraved lines of which were filled with a dark, enamel-like substance that when pressed in to the paper produced the image. The plaques decorated household and liturgical objects. Originally used by goldsmiths to check work in progress, the prints soon became valued in their own right. Peregrino engraved metal plates in the same style and scale as the niello plaques specifically to create printed images.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Orpheus seated playing his lyre, and charming the animals
  • Artist: Peregrino da Cesena (Italian, active Bologna, ca. 1490–ca. 1520)
  • Date: ca. 1500–20
  • Medium: Niello print (in the manner of nielli)
  • Dimensions: Plate: 2 1/16 x 1 3/16 in. (5.2 x 3 cm)
  • Classification: Prints
  • Credit Line: Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1928
  • Object Number: 28.97.99
  • Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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The Judgment of Paris: he is sitting at left with Venus, Juno and Pallas Athena, a winged victory above. In the upper section the Sun in his chariot preceeded by Castor and Pollux on horseback, at lower right two river gods and a naiad above whom Jupiter, an eagle, Ganymede, Diana and another goddess, Marcantonio Raimondi Italian, Engraving
The Judgment of Paris: he is sitting at left with Venus, Juno and Pallas Athena, a winged victory above. In the upper section the Sun in his chariot preceeded by Castor and Pollux on horseback, at lower right two river gods and a naiad above whom Jupiter, an eagle, Ganymede, Diana and another goddess
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