Euclid (c. 300 BC) was one of the greatest mathematicians in history. In this print he is seen leaning over forward, but in fact this head is only a detail. Domenico Cunego has based his etching on a similar drawing by Raphael Mengs. Mengs’s father had great artistic ambitions for his son. And so from 1741 to 1744 he shut the boy in the Vatican from morning to evening so that he should practise and draw after the works of Raphael (1483-1520) and others. It is to be hoped that Mengs derived some benefit from his efforts, as he was in Rome again some 15 years later. This time he brought with him a commission for a painted copy of Raphael’s School of Athens in the Vatican.
The painted copy, which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, was to be full size. And further to this, Mengs also made full-size drawings of most of the heads of the various figures. These included the drawing of Euclid’s head, which the etcher Cunego has here used as his model. In The School of Athens, Euclid is seen teaching his pupils geometry. So he is bending forward as he is drawing on a plate lying on the floor. Altogether, Cunego did prints of 52 heads from The School of Athens; Pythagoras is another example (inv.no. E1965), and in addition, Cunego also made a small scale print of the entire motif (inv.no. E477).
