Rape of Proserpina

Scolari’s prints culminate the Venetian tradition of woodcut and its pictorial emphasis. His compositions, while clearly informed by contemporary painting, are all his own invention. Their scale is unusually large. And their vocabulary, with sweeping cuts and striking textures, suggests an equivalent of the loaded pigment and pronounced brushwork of the school’s canvases. Here, the mythological subject, the steep descent, the violent movement recall Tintoretto in particular.