Saint Deicolus and the Boar

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Artist: Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner (German, 1712–1761)
Medium: Pen and brown and gray inks and brush and gray wash heightened with white gouache; incised, verso coated with red chalk
Size: Sheet: 52.2 x 73.5 cm (20 9/16 x 28 15/16 in.)
Culture: Germany, 18th century
Museum: Cleveland Museum of Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

German artist Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner's innovations in rococo design are magnificently demonstrated in this sheet showing the story of Saint Deicolus and the Boar. The format of the work imitates that of a decorative cartouche, an ornamental framework surrounding an open field usually reserved for an inscription or emblem.

Baumgartner ingeniously adapted the cartouche form for this scene: the framing elements seem to grow out of the landscape but are clearly artificial, and have the appearance of exuberant metalwork intertwined with vegetation and rocks. Deicolus was an Irish saint who founded an abbey in the Burgundy region of France. Baumgartner shows an incident in which Deicolus saved a boar from the hunting party of the ruler Clotaire II. The highly finished drawing on blue paper was made as a design for print from a suite combining saints with depictions of the hunt.