The Massacre of the Innocents

Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael

National Gallery of Art

Printed with black lines and hatching on cream-white paper, a woman clutching an infant runs toward us as muscular men attack other women holding babies to each side in front of a town in this horizonal engraving. At the far left, a woman hunches over a motionless child, her hand on the baby’s chest. A nude man nearby unsheathes a sword as he grabs the leg of a child held by a woman, who attempts to turn protectively away. A kneeling woman to the right braces her child behind her back and reaches up to defend herself against a man swinging a sword back to strike. Another man pulls a woman’s hair in the background and a third stabs a woman in the chest as she clutches her child to her other shoulder. Two more baby boys lie already dead underfoot. The people are closely packed and overlapping, and many reach or gesture upward or outward. The scene takes place on a paved or stone town square in front of an arching bridge. Stone structures rise beyond the bridge, and clouds skim across the otherwise blank sky. On the stone wall to the left, there is a rectangular plaque inscribed with “RAPH VRBI INVE” and the initials MA intertwined.