The Massacre of the Innocents
Details
The story
Around 1610, painting on copper was in fashion in Rome, where northern artists such as the German Adam Elsheimer made small, minutely detailed pictures on metal sheets. Scarsellino chose the same support for this crowded scene, a plate about half a metre wide.
His starting point was about a century old, the Massacre of the Innocents engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi after a design by Raphael. In the engraving the mothers keep a statue-like composure. Scarsellino packs the foreground with straining soldiers, desperate women and dead infants, under a Roman colonnade, with a ruined city beyond in the murky light of a stormy dawn. Another copper of the same subject, in a private collection, is recognised as his sketch for this one.
In the lower left corner is a painted number, 257. The same number appears beside this picture in the Borghese inventory of 1693.
