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

Salvatore Grippi

For this intaglio titled "Children of Niobe" Grippi used lift-ground etching and engraving to create this image, composed of lines and tones of gray and black with an irregular border. Human figures intermingle with the 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.

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.

Grippi was one of a number of artists who experimented with shaped plates while working at Atelier 17 in New York. This is a proof from a series of states of this image. In this state he stopped out irregular spaces in the border of the plate, which would be cut out of the plate in later proofs.