Art, literature & history
Virgil the Magician Hanging in the Basket
1541/42
- Dating
- Date range
- Held at
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Medium
- Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
- Dimensions
- Image/sheet: 5.7 × 8.2 cm (2 1/4 × 3 1/4 in.)
- Collection no.
- 1919.2313
- Attribution
- By the artist
- Image rights
- CC0 1.0License details
Georg Pencz. Virgil the Magician Hanging in the Basket. Georg Pencz; Art Institute of Chicago; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer. CC0 1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). Full-frame proportional resize and JPEG compression.
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
About this artwork
Virgil the Magician Hanging in the Basket — Georg Pencz. 1541/42.
Medium: Engraving in black on ivory laid paper. Dimensions: Image/sheet: 5.7 × 8.2 cm (2 1/4 × 3 1/4 in.).
Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.
In stories told during the Renaissance the ancient Roman poet Virgil was known as a magician or sorcerer. In one legend, he became enamored of Emperor Augustus’s daughter. Uninterested in him, she tricked him into climbing into a basket to gain entry to her chambers. After pulling him halfway up the tower, she literally left him hanging, an object of public ridicule.
Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.
Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.
Location checked Sep 10, 2026. This does not indicate whether the work is on display.