1557
Lucas van Doetecum (Netherlandish, active c. 1554; died before March 1584) after Frans Floris I (Flemish, 1516-1570)
Flanders
This massive vertical two-sheet etching makes Jesus Christ’s triumphant return from the dead truly monumental through both its scale and stark network of raised black lines. The rough-hewn feel of the technique befits this reworking of Frans Floris’s hypermuscular angels and blindingly bright vision of the ascending Christ. The soldiers recoil in amazement, as one attempts to shield himself from the light. Floris is credited at lower right. The etcher, Lucas van Doetecum, is unnamed; he worked in Antwerp for the publisher Hieronymous Cock, who signed his name just after the Latin poem celebrating death’s final vanquishing.
Etching from two plates in black on two sheets of ivory laid paper, joined at the center