- Title
- Aurora
- Date Made
- after 1613
- Medium
- Etching and engraving
- Dimensions
- Image: 5 3/4 × 6 9/16 in. (14.61 × 16.67 cm)
Sheet: 5 3/4 × 6 5/8 in. (14.61 × 16.83 cm)
Secondary support: 5 13/16 × 6 11/16 in. (14.76 × 16.99 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2023.245.4
- Collecting Area
- Prints and Drawings
- Curatorial Notes
The only landscape produced by Goudt, this vivid depiction of dawn features a wide and rolling countryside, illuminated by a rising sun that barely peers out from the trees and high ground at right. A shepherd approaches in front of a wooded hill at left, drawing the viewer’s eye into the scene, suggestive of the arcadian paradises of Virgil. The atmospheric effects apparent in beams of light and pockets of shadow throughout the work were gaining popularity in painting at the dawn of the seventeenth century, but were all but unheard of—and challenging to produce—in print. Goudt’s efforts at these atmospheric effects would later prompt other artists, including Rembrandt, to attempt engraved night scenes and compositions featuring shadow. At the bottom margin, a Latin elegiac couplet evokes the sense of hope brought about by the lifting of the shade of night by the morning light.
The landscape is after a painting by Adam Elsheimer (15781610). Probably created after Goudt’s departure from Rome, the sensitively done Aurora and its inscription suggests something of the artist’s longing for the Roman countryside.
Claire Spadafora Baes
2024
