Etching and engraving. Sheet size: 55 x 33.3 cm. Bartsch xxxvii, p. 4.4; Edmund P. Pillsbury & Louise S. Richards, The Graphic Art of Federico Barocci; exh. cat. Cleveland / New Haven (Yale) 1978, no. 73; Sue Welsh Reed & Richard Wallace, Italian Etchers of the Renaissance & Baroque; exh. cat. Boston 1989, no. 42.

Provenance: Collection Kasimir Hagen, Cologne (not in Lugt)

Balanced impression with some plate tone and traces of wiping. Prior to the Stefano Scolari's address. With 4 mm margins around the plate mark. On a late nineteenth-century mount. Two tiny holes, otherwise very well preserved.

This is probably the first of four etchings by Barocci (Pillsbury/Richard, p. 93), and the one Bartsch considered as his main work. Barocci here reproduces his own altarpiece for the church of St Francis in Urbino, which he had completed in 1576. Together with Barocci's three other etchings, this well-known sheet ranks among the most important creations of Italian Baroque printmaking. The most detailed description of this work and a discussion of its importance can be found in Edmund P. Pillsbury & Louise S. Richards, The Graphic Art of Federico Barocci, Cleveland/New Haven (Yale) 1978.