Head of a Man in Three-Quarter Profile

Frans Crabbe van Espleghem

1522 · Engraving · Drawings and Prints

This riveting engraving of an African is one of the rare depictions, if not the only one, of a black man as an independent subject in Northern European fifteenth and sixteenth-century art. Most likely not a portrait, the figure has a generalized character; he may have been intended to represent the African king from the Biblical scene of the Adoration of the Magi, often represented at this time as an African figure with a long jeweled earring. Characteristic of Crabbe's prints is his experimentation with ways of expressing tones and textures with the printed line. Here he contrasted the varied shades of the figure's dark skin, delineated with concentric lines that encircle the eye, with the many little curls of the hair. This is the only impression known of this print.

Artist

Frans Crabbe van Espleghem

Date

1522

Medium

Engraving

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Purchase, Louis V. Bell Fund and Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1998