Heinrich Aldegrever
Marcus Curtius
1532
Engraving
15.3 cm x 10.6 cm (6 in. x 4 3/16 in.)
The Leo Steinberg Collection, 2002

The ancient Roman historian Livy recounts the legend of the soldier Marcus Curtius. When a chasm opened in the Forum, an oracle said that it could be filled only with the city's greatest treasure. Believing this to be valor, Curtius leaped on horseback into the chasm, which then closed. The legend explained a pond once visible in the Forum and epitomized Roman civic virtue, which was a frequent subject during the Renaissance. Here, the antique flavor is intensified by the group of female nudes with affected postures and a plasticity worthy of statuary. Heinrich Aldegrever was one of the so-called Little Masters who dominated printmaking in Nuremberg in the wake of Albrecht Dürer. Inspired by the style and success of the master's engravings, they specialized in miniature work of humanistic subject and superb craft. Their engravings demonstrate the technique's traditional relation to goldsmithing, tendency toward precision, and inherent preciousness. They were intended for collectors for whom such material properties made them desirable objects. Its subject and extraordinary quality make this impression a superb example. The museum possesses an excellent group of work by the Little Masters, with sixteen by Aldegrever, thirty-eight by Hans Sebald Beham, and twenty by Georg Pencz, to name the principals