1560
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Dominant colour
A draftsman leaning against an obelisk sketching ruins is a 1560 by Virgil Solis, a Renaissance work, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
The painting shows a draftsman leaning against an obelisk, sketching ancient ruins. This scene is interesting because it combines everyday life with a sense of history and decay. The draftsman is focused on his work, while the ruins loom in the background. To learn more about the use of contrasting light and dark in this print, look up the technique: chiaroscuro.
The engraving depicts an imaginary scene of ancient Roman ruins, featuring a draftsman sketching amid crumbling structures while leaning against an obelisk. Created by Virgil Solis after Jacques Androuet Du Cerceau’s 1550 designs, the print is part of a series of thirteen works known as *the little book of architecture ruins*. Solis’s reverse copy adapts Du Cerceau’s earlier French engravings, which themselves drew inspiration from Flemish artist Léonard Thiry’s original drawings. The composition reflects the 16th-century fascination with antique themes and ruins, with Solis noting in his…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Virgil Solis or Virgilius Solis (1514 – 1 August 1562), a member of a prolific family of artists, was a German draughtsman and printmaker in engraving, etching and woodcut who worked in his native city of Nuremberg.
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