Christ 1510 - 1563

Curator: Standing before us is a sheet of engravings by Andrea Schiavone, who lived from 1510 to 1563, titled simply "Christ." What are your first impressions? Editor: It strikes me as…fragmented, like a collection of ancient postage stamps. The figures are ethereal, almost wispy, rendered in this delicate web of lines, but contained within these regimented blocks. It feels very intentionally archaic. Curator: Indeed, there’s a conscious archaism at play. Schiavone, known also as Andrea Meldola, embraced a Venetian style that looked back, even as it innovated. These prints, housed at the Metropolitan Museum, echo the past in both subject and technique. Editor: The subjects clearly borrow classical ideas and styles of representing divine and heroic figures, especially those halos radiating like suns or heavenly hosts from most of them. I think the symbols have been carefully considered. There's real strength in that simplicity, almost a kind of pre-Raphaelite purity of expression, but also what looks like unfinished forms or postures. It reminds me of someone working through poses, attitudes, and meanings that seem almost too familiar, perhaps reconsidering the weight these forms are meant to bear in the mind. Curator: Absolutely. Schiavone's work often involved a kind of reimagining. He takes familiar religious imagery and infuses it with this sense of… unrest? Almost like a visual stream of consciousness. Note how, despite the common title of “Christ,” there’s significant variation in how each figure is presented, in age, gesture, even level of completion. They appear to be iterating, searching through what these classical gestures and iconographies can represent in an explicitly Christian context. Editor: I agree, especially looking at the third row on the sheet where each form really tests how we’re meant to receive it as an act of representation or invocation, and yet Schiavone seems hesitant to name exactly who it is. Well, now that I think about it, I might want to bring this kind of open exploration and symbolism into my own art. Thank you. Curator: My pleasure! The wonderful thing is to see these images acting in relation with each other and with us in unexpected and rewarding ways.