Bartolommeo Coriolano
Italian, 1599-1676

Sibyl (after Guido Reni, Italian, 1575-1642),
ca. 1640
Chiaroscuro woodcut

Museum Purchase
1983.3.1

Coriolano worked with Guido Reni and often did prints which followed his master's work. This one also resembles, just a little, Michelangelo's great Cumaean Sibyl in the Sistine Chapel. The sibyls were priestess-prophets in the ancient Greco-Roman world but were thought by Christians to have predicted the coming of Christ. The Medieval feminist poet Christine de Pizan saw them as proof that women also possessed the power of valid prophecy. This aged sibyl, bent over a prophetic scroll, seems full of the woe and power of wisdom and prophecy. As Christine says: "Foremost among the ladies of sovereign dignity are the wise sibyls, most filled with wisdom... Wisdom means sorrow but also the life of truth." For Christine, tears and sorrow are part of the strength and truth of women.


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