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Your galleryThe Creation of Adam
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Look at the white lines wiped out of the black ink: broad, angular strokes for God in his cloud and finer ones for Adam’s body.
This is Castiglione’s earliest known monotype, a kind of print he is credited with inventing. He covered a copper plate with ink, wiped the design out of it with a blunt point such as a stick or the end of a brush, and printed it once onto paper, so that God and Adam emerge from darkness, fitting for a story of creation. A monotype yields only one good impression, and the method was not fully explored until the 1800s, by artists such as Edgar Degas.
Monotype in black ink on ivory laid paper · 30.3 × 20.3 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Baroque
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Creation of Adam
- Artist
- Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione Italian, 1609-1664
- Date
- c. 1645/50
- Medium
- Monotype in black ink on ivory laid paper
- Dimensions
- 30.3 × 20.3 cm (11 15/16 × 8 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of an anonymous donor; purchased with funds provided by Dr. William D. and Sara R. Shorey, and Mr. and Mrs. George B. Young
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.