Adoration of the Shepherds

Dutch engraver Cornelis Cort was a pivotal figure in 16th-century printmaking. Trained in Antwerp under the print publisher Hieronymus Cock, he later worked in Venice with Titian and in Rome with artists such as Taddeo Zuccaro. To translate Taddeo’s dramatic composition of the adoration of the shepherds, Cort utilized his innovative “swelling line,” a method of shaping tone and volume with swelled lines that are crossed at various angles to provide clarity and luminosity to a complicated composition.