Sacrifice

c. 1775–1776

Dating: Approximate date range
Held at: The Cleveland Museum of Art
Medium: etching and aquatint printed in black and brown, heightened with white gouache
Dimensions: Sheet: 24.2 x 17.6 cm (9 1/2 x 6 15/16 in.); Image: 22.7 x 16.1 cm (8 15/16 x 6 5/16 in.)
Collection no.: 1997.34
Attribution: By the artist
Image rights: CC0 1.0License details

Giovanni David. Sacrifice. Giovanni David; The Cleveland Museum of Art; John L. Severance Fund. CC0 1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). Full-frame proportional resize and JPEG compression.

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art

About this artwork

Sacrifice — Giovanni David. c. 1775–1776.

Medium: etching and aquatint printed in black and brown, heightened with white gouache. Dimensions: Sheet: 24.2 x 17.6 cm (9 1/2 x 6 15/16 in.); Image: 22.7 x 16.1 cm (8 15/16 x 6 5/16 in.).

Collection record: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

David was the most intriguing Genoese print-maker of the 18th century. Like Francisco Goya, his Spanish contemporary, he was a very early practitioner of aquatint, a technique invented in France about 1765. David's free, painterly handling of this type of etching medium, which produces the effect of a wash, created subtle effects of light and atmosphere.

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.

Artwork sources

Image source