Virgil Suspended in a Basket

This print inverts the normal practice of placing the main subject in the foreground. The victim, the first-century BC poet Virgil, is the small melancholic figure seated in the basket behind. Accordding to a late medieval French fable, the Roman poet fell in love with the daughter of Emperor Augustus. Thinking that she shares his passion, he arranged to meet her. On the appointed night, she lowered a basket from her bedroom, but she hoisted him up only halfway and mocked his folly. With morning’s light, Virgil’s plight was revealed to the Romans.

The solidity and immediacy of the figures in the engraving are impressive. Lucas van Leyden favoured a cooler tonality and a narrower range of chiaroscuro contrasts than D�rer.

It is assumed by some scholars that the central figure in the engraving is a likeness of the painter Jan Gossart, who traveled with Lucas in 1526-27. One of Lucas’s most elaborate prints, this engraving certainly shows the influence of Gossart’s types in the foreground.