Saint Deicolus and the Boar

1748

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Dominant colour

Saint Deicolus and the Boar is a 1748 by Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner
When & what style?: 1748 · Baroque
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

You see a saint in a forest, kneeling beside a dead boar while angels hover above. The scene is framed by swirling, fancy scrolls that look like carved wood or stone. Baumgartner turned a simple religious story into something playful. The frame isn’t real—it’s painted to look like decoration, almost like a picture inside a picture. This was common in 18th-century Germany, where art mixed storytelling with ornament. Look up *rococo* to see more of this light, decorative style.

The story of this work

Overview

German artist Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner's innovations in rococo design are magnificently demonstrated in this sheet showing the story of Saint Deicolus and the Boar. The format of the work imitates that of a decorative cartouche, an ornamental framework surrounding an open field usually reserved for an inscription or emblem. Baumgartner ingeniously adapted the cartouche form for this scene: the framing elements seem to grow out of the landscape but are clearly artificial, and have the appearance of exuberant metalwork intertwined with vegetation and rocks. Deicolus was an Irish saint who…