The Vision of Ezekiel
Original title: The vision of Ezekiel, with the dead rising and putting on their flesh, God the Father above in the sky
kurzbeschreibung
Giovanni Battista Fontana brought out this engraving in 1579, and it takes as its subject the vision of the prophet Ezekiel. Prophet, dead rising from their graves and God the Father above the clouds are drawn into one restless arrangement. The print is worked in graded greys, its forms built up from fine strokes and hatching.
Description
Ezekiel stands at the middle of the sheet, his right hand raised amid the turmoil around him. On every side the dead push themselves upright, bones gradually clothing themselves in flesh. Ruins and broken buildings further back suggest a devastated city. Above it all God the Father appears, wrapped in cloud and bright light. A strong pull into depth carries the eye inward.
Context
The Italian engraver Giovanni Battista Fontana, active in the Renaissance, made this print in 1579. He worked from the biblical vision of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 37). Subjects of this kind turn up often in sixteenth-century religious art, since they were meant to set the resurrection of the dead and the power of God before the viewer's eyes.
Impact
The abundance of detail heightens the drama of the sheet and brings out the loftiness of the divine vision. Earthly decay set against heavenly light gives the image a tension you can feel.
Technique
The image came about as an engraving: lines were cut into a metal plate, which was then printed. Thin strokes and hatching yield crisp contours and surface textures of the kind characteristic of Renaissance printmaking.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)