1512
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Massacre of the Innocents (Without the Fir Tree) is a 1512 by Marcantonio Raimondi, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see soldiers in armor killing babies while mothers scream and clutch at them. A dead child lies in the foreground, blood pooling on the ground. This engraving was made after a drawing by Raphael, who was working right next to Michelangelo in the Vatican. The scene comes from the Bible—King Herod ordered all young boys killed to stop a new king from rising. The chaos feels almost staged, like a play frozen in time. To see how Raphael built scenes like this, look up *sfumato*.
Raphael drew this composition to be engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi while working in the Vatican apartments adjacent to Michelangelo, who was then painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The emotive scene portrays a moment from the biblical Book of Matthew when King Herod, hearing of the birth of a savior, ordered the execution of all male children under two years of age. Known for the clarity and balance of his forms and compositions, the younger Raphael may have found inspiration for this composition in Michelangelo’s narrative intensity and active, twisting nude forms.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Marcantonio Raimondi, often called simply Marcantonio (c. 1470/82 – c. 1534), was an Italian engraver, known for being the first important printmaker whose body of work consists largely of prints copying paintings. He…
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