Virgin and Child (after Lucas van Leyden)

The son of a painter, Lucas van Leyden demonstrated artistic gifts very early and made as many as two hundred prints in his relatively short life. An interest in engraving runs throughout his career and was stoked dramatically by his meeting with Dürer in 1521, when the two artists exchanged prints. After that, Lucas’s engravings adopted a more Düreresque style. The iconography of this print comes from one of the visions of St. John the Evangelist on Patmos, recorded in Revelations 12:1: "a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet." This engraving appears to be a copy after Lucas’s print of 1523, because the image is reversed (although the "L" monogram and date have been preserved in their proper orientation).