About this artwork
The Romantic painter John Hamilton Mortimer etched a series of Shakespearean heads in the mode of Thomas Frye’s Life-Sized Heads. However, this encounter between a powerful, aged sorceress and a terrified maiden has no literary source. Mortimer invented it himself, possibly responding to a critic’s assertion that Shakespeare was the only English genius who could successfully depict the preternatural realm. Dixon published another theatrical mezzotint that same year, Mr. Garrick in Richard III.
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Status
- Currently Off View
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Department
- Prints and Drawings
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Artist
- John Dixon
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Title
- An Incantation
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Place
- England (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- Made 1772
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Medium
- Mezzotint with touches of engraving in black on ivory laid paper
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Dimensions
- Image/plate: 61 × 48.5 cm (24 1/16 × 19 1/8 in.); Sheet: 66.9 × 51.5 cm (26 3/8 × 20 5/16 in.)
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Credit Line
- The Wallace L. DeWolf and Joseph Brooks Fair Collections
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Reference Number
- 1920.20
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IIIF Manifest
- https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/133282/manifest.json