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Your galleryOrnamental Panel With Two Lovers
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Start with the couple at the top, then hunt through the leaves for the birds, a running animal and the small figure climbing the central stem.
Ornament prints full of curling leaves and small figures were in great demand in the late 1400s, and Israhel van Meckenem made many of them. Here a fashionable couple sits at the top of the scrolling foliage, the woman in a tall pointed headdress, while birds, animals and little climbing figures hide among the leaves below. The pale leaves stand out against a ground of dense, dark hatching.
Engraving printed in black, on ivory laid paper · 16.3 × 23.9 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Late Gothic and Early Renaissance
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Ornamental Panel With Two Lovers
- Artist
- Israhel van Meckenem the Younger German, c. 1440/45-1503
- Date
- 1480–90
- Medium
- Engraving printed in black, on ivory laid paper
- Dimensions
- 16.3 × 23.9 cm (6 7/16 × 9 7/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Bequest of Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr.
- 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.