The Tiburtine Sibyl Showing the Vision of the Virgin to Emperor Augustus

The unidentified author of this engraving is named for a pair of initials that appear in a few of his prints—“The Master E.S.” His work precedes Dürer’s by a generation, but offers insight into the direction of printmaking around the middle of the fifteenth century. The techniques of engraving—created with a sharp tool (burin) by incising lines into a metal plate— had developed to the point where prints could begin to compete with painting and its degree of illusionism.

As told in the Golden Legend, the Tiburtine Sibyl revealed to the Emperor Augustus a vision of the Virgin and Child on the site of the future Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli at Rome. It has been argued that this print may be a copy of a now lost painting rather than an independent composition and that the influence of Netherlandish painting (specifically that of Rogier van der Weyden) was prominent in the world of Master E.S.