Luca Cambiaso (Moneglia 1527-1585 Madrid)

This dramatic, monumental composition was executed by Cambiaso in the early 1560s and popularized by a reproductive woodcut first published by Arthur Pond in Imitation of Drawings, 1734. The artist created an alternative depiction of this celebrated passage from the life of Saint Anthony on a second sheet of similar size, now in the Cleveland Museum of Art (inv. 1929.540), where the arrangement appears in reverse and with a different background. Two other copies of lesser quality attest the fortunes of this composition (Louvre, Paris, inv. 9272 and 9273). We are grateful to Jonathan Bober for confirming the attribution to Cambiaso based on a digital image.