The Three Prisoners

Jacopo de' Barbari's engravings are signed with a caduceus (a staff with two serpents twined around it) and until the mid-19th century his true identity was a mystery. It is now known that he was the first Italian Renaissance artist of note to travel to Germany and the Netherlands, and that his work was known and appreciated by Albrecht Dürer. There is still much scholarly debate as to the exact influence of Barbari's work on Dürer's engravings, and vise versa, and a comparison between the two artists does indeed pose a variety of interesting questions. In this engraving of three naked men set in a landscape there is a close relationship to Dürer's prints of the same period. In this work we see the lively graphic manner of Barbari's engravings as well as his emphasis on long, sinuous modeling lines.