- Title
- Hyems
- Date Made
- Probably before mid-1580s
- Period
- Probably late 16th century
- Medium
- Engraving
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 9 3/4 × 6 1/4 in. (24.77 × 15.88 cm)
Image: 9 5/8 × 6 1/4 in. (24.45 × 15.88 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.88.91.185b
- Collecting Area
- Prints and Drawings
- Curatorial Notes
Early in his career, Cherubino Alberti produced engravings after important sixteenth-century paintings by Raphael and his followers, notably Polidoro da Caravaggio, who specialized in decorations that once adorned the facades of Roman houses. Cherubino’s prints are thus valuable documents of works that might otherwise be lost to time. This series of four prints (see also M.88.91.85a, c, and d) probably dates to the first half of the 1580s, when his primary concern was in making engravings that reproduced Mannerist fresco paintings. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, he was receiving decorative commissions of his own, and the prints that can be dated to that period include dedications to powerful families like the Medici not seen in the present series.
The unique form of these four engravings indicates that they are meant to depict decorations on spandrels, the curved arches that join wall and ceiling. Each spandrel features a personification of one of the four seasons. Here, Hyems (Winter) appears as an aged, bearded man in ragged clothes who sits with arms crossed while darkened clouds and rainy skies gather around him.
Claire Spadafora Baes
2024
- Selected Bibliography
- Bartsch, Adam von. The Illustrated Bartsch. New York: Abaris Books, 1978.
