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Unknown artist

The Way of Salvation

c. 1490
Woodcut in black hand colored with brush and watercolor on cream laid paper, laid down on cream laid paper
26.3 × 18 cm (10.4 × 7.1 in)

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In the collection of Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago · as of July 2026

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

A pair of prints from opposite sides of the Alps demonstrates the didactic capabilities of devotional printmaking. Both depict a sacred mountain that the soul must climb toward heaven. In Baccio Baldini’s extremely early engraved book illustration of an Italianate ladder of virtues, a monk successfully ascends, while a fashionable young man is dragged away by a demon representing worldly pleasures. Its thistle-laden German counterpart consists of banderole rungs filled with xylographic text and a crowned Christ waiting in glory. A nun kneeling at the bottom may have commissioned the print. She envisions a torturous journey up the steep incline, her twelve-step program advocating different Christian virtues: faith, generosity, modesty, constancy, justice, strength, will, patience, obedience, humility and at long last, divinity.

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