Artwork story
About Panel with a Candelabrum Containing a Female Satyr Seated on a Helmet
The artist and artwork
Heinrich Aldegrever engraved Panel with a Candelabrum Containing a Female Satyr Seated on a Helmet in 1549. The German artist worked chiefly in Soest and belonged to the printmakers later called the Little Masters because of the compressed scale and precision of their copper engravings. This sheet is only about two and five-eighths inches high. Aldegrever made nearly three hundred prints, and roughly one-third were ornament designs for metalwork, so this miniature fantasy could function both as an image to collect and as a vocabulary of forms for other makers.
The world around it
The engraving appeared in a German-speaking world transformed by the Reformation. Religious unity had fractured, prints carried arguments and images across political borders, and the Holy Roman Empire would not formally recognize Lutheran worship until the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. Aldegrever actively supported the Reformation and also produced Old Testament subjects, yet this plate is deliberately secular and classical in tone. Its hybrid bodies, trophies, vessels, foliage, and hanging fabric show Renaissance ornament moving through print: an intricate portable design could travel farther than any single carved or cast object.
A detail to notice
Here “candelabrum” means the whole upright ornamental framework, not simply a candlestick. At its base, a bare-breasted female satyr sits on a helmet with goat legs spread beneath her, arms extended toward an eagle on one side and an owl on the other. Above her, fruit, leaves, fishlike forms, drapery, horned animal heads, weapons, and tall female figures balance around a central axis. The design looks symmetrical from a distance but keeps changing its paired details. Aldegrever even tucked his AG monogram into the tiny lower-left plinth, making authorship one more component in the crowded architecture.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is print ornament & architecture made in Engraving and held in the Drawings and Prints department.
Recorded dimensions include Sheet: 2 5/8 × 1 7/8 in. (6.7 × 4.8 cm).
Subject terms include Birds, Helmets, Fruit, Female Nudes, and Satyrs. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Rogers Fund, 1923.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-23.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
See the products currently available with this artwork. Product choices appear only when the exact item is published, in stock, and available to purchase.