Death from the Sky (aka: The Children of Niobe)

Salvatore Grippi

For the shaped plate intaglio "Death from the Sky" (in earlier proofs titled "The Children of Niobe" Grippi used lift-ground etching and engraving to create this image, composed of lines and toneal areas of gray and black. Human figures intermingle with Greek deities Artemis and Apollo in a chaotic whirl of violence and death. The figures are created by use of short, engraved lines and do not try to define one from another, adding to the sense of confusion and drama.

Grippi was another printmaker who experimented with shaped plates while working at Atelier 17 in New York. This is the final proof from a series of states of this image. Grippi cut the edges of the plate and shapes from the center of the composition, which print as white. The result is a defining of the action and a defining of Apollo and Artemis as the protaganists.

According to Homer’s Iliad, Niobe, the wife of King Amphion of Thebes, had six sons and six daughters and boasted of her progenitive superiority to the Titan Leto, who had only two children, the twin deities Apollo and Artemis. As punishment for her pride, Apollo killed all Niobe’s sons, and Artemis killed all but one of her daughters.