Artwork
The Mission of the Seventy
The Mission of the Seventy is an ink print by the Renaissance artist Léonard Gaultier. It dates from 1578 and is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.
About this work
Overview
Created circa 1578, *The Mission of the Seventy* is an engraving by Léonard Gaultier, a French printmaker active in Paris and Mainz. The image depicts a procession of men moving through a river‑front landscape, some barefoot and robed, others bearing staffs or books, with a town and boats visible beyond. The composition suggests an organized journey, likely drawn from a biblical narrative.
Subject & Meaning
The work illustrates a group of travelers, traditionally identified as the seventy disciples sent out by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Their varied attire and the presence of books imply a missionary purpose, while the orderly march through a populated riverside setting underscores themes of evangelism and communal effort within a sacred context.
Technique & Style
Gaultier employed a meticulous graver technique, producing fine, linear incisions that render the figures and architecture with crisp clarity.
Gaultier employed a meticulous graver technique, producing fine, linear incisions that render the figures and architecture with crisp clarity. The engraving is characteristic of his formal, restrained style, echoing the precise line work of contemporaries such as the Wierix brothers and Crispyn van de Passe. The composition balances detailed foreground activity with a more subdued background, reinforcing a sense of controlled narrative flow.
History & Provenance
The print belongs to Gaultier’s extensive output of religious and portrait engravings, a body that exceeded eight hundred plates in the collection of the Abbé de Marolles. Produced in the late sixteenth century, the engraving circulated among devotional prints in France and the Low Countries, reflecting the artist’s reputation for faithful reproductions of his own designs and for serving the market for biblical illustrations.
Artist & collection
Artist
Léonard Gaultier, or, as he sometimes signed himself, Galter, a French engraver, was born at Mainz about 1561, and died in Paris in 1641.
