  About the Artwork
  
  
  This painting depicts the horrifying slaughter undertaken on the order of Herod, king of Judea, and described in the Bible’s Gospel of Matthew. Alerted to the birth of Jesus, Herod ordered the death of all male babies under the age of two. In Bernardino Jacopi Butinone’s depiction, the massacre is already underway. Bodies lie maimed on the ground; a soldier with sword upraised pursues a woman fleeing with her child. Butinone employs a strategy new to his time called linear perspective to create an illusion of depth on a flat surface. All parallel lines converge on a single vanishing point located on the composition’s horizon line. In this case, that vanishing point is located roughly behind the head of the seated King Herod who sits observing the terror he has unleashed.
  
  
  Title
  The Massacre of The Innocents
  
  
  Artwork Date
  mid- to late 15th century
  
  Artist
  Bernardino Jacopi Butinone
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  ca. 1450-1510
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  Italian
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Tempera on poplar panel
  
  
  Dimensions
  Image: 9 7/8 × 8 5/16 inches (25.1 × 21.1 cm)
  Framed: 15 × 13 9/16 × 1 1/2 inches (38.1 × 34.4 × 3.8 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  European Painting
  
  
  Credit
  Founders Society Purchase, Eleanor Clay Ford Fund
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  64.81
  
  
  Copyright
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