The Guardian Angel

Jacopo de' Barbari was one of the most important yet enigmatic Venetian printmakers of the late fifteenth century. Noted for his travel to Germany and the Netherlands, and for his friendship with Albrecht Dürer, Jacopo served as a conduit for stylistic and technical influences between North and South. This unusual subject, which probably relates to a religious text, was executed in the chiaroscuro engraving technique of modeling with light and shade introduced by Dürer's Passion series of 1507-12.