Massacre of the Innocents; group of women and children being attacked, two angels at upper left, after Reni

Print • Prints

Created in 1670 during the Baroque period, this work belongs firmly within the daily life tradition. Gian Battista Bolognini worked at a moment when the rivalry between Catholic Baroque drama and Protestant restraint reshaped what a painting could mean. Every gesture, fabric, and gleam of light was decoded by contemporary viewers like a private language.

As Etching (Sheet (Trimmed): 16 7/16 × 10 9/16 in. (41.8 × 26.9 cm)), the work shows the tool marks and layering choices typical of Gian Battista Bolognini's output in this period — decisions about ground, underpainting, and glaze that a photograph can only partly convey.

Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Even the everyday is loaded: a basin, a candle, a worn shoe become small monuments to a vanished daily world.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York now holds the work, where conservators and historians continue to revisit its condition and attribution. Each generation of scholarship adds a layer to how Gian Battista Bolognini's output from this period is understood.

“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”