# Study for the engraving The Massacre of the Innocents [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [RAFFAELLO Sanzio]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Pen and brown ink, over red chalk, pricked for transfer, 231 x 374 mm ## Commentary This is the first surviving compositional study for the engraving made by Marcantonio Raimondi. Part of the outlines are pricked for transfer to another sheet. It had been suggested that these outlines may have been transferred to the study sheet now in the Royal Collection, Windsor. This study for the engraving The Massacre of the Innocents shows nude figures, the women shielding their babies against soldiers, including one woman crouched in foreground, her baby behind her. The engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi is known in two versions, one with a fir tree in the background and one without. The technique of the drawing is quite interesting. Raphael seems to have worked on it in three or four stages. First, he drew the majority of the composition in pen and ink, then the drawing was pricked for transfer, then he added the executioner and victim in red chalk on the right without pricking the outlines, finally, he drew the baby's head at the top of the sheet. ## Related artworks - [A Group of Nude Men]() - [A Group of Warriors]() - [A nude man advancing to the right \(verso\)]() - [A Soldier before the Cell of St Peter]() - [A Youthful Warrior \(recto\)]() - [Adam and Eve \(ceiling panel\)]() - [Aerial view]() - [Aldobrandini Madonna \(Garvagh Madonna\)]() - [Allegory \(The Knight's Dream\)]() - [Amorini at play \(verso\)]() - [An Angel]() - [Angel \(fragment of the Baronci Altarpiece\)]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()