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Pierre Firens, printmaker

Cartouche, late 1500s - early 1600s

Description

Maker

  • After Federico Zuccaro, 1540/43-1609, Italian, designer
  • Pierre Firens, 1597 - ca. 1636/9, French, printmaker

Title

Cartouche

Year

late 1500s - early 1600s

Medium

Engraving on paper

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • engraving

Supports

  • Light weight cream laid paper

Dimensions

18.4 x 15.1 cm (7 3/16 x 5 7/8 inches) (plate)

Identification

State

i/ii

Type

  • Works on Paper,
  • Prints

Credit

Museum Works of Art Fund

Object Number

69.165.4

About

A monstrous mouth gapes open, leaving a blank oval shape. Around it two hybrid female creatures—part human, part snake—twist their tentacle-like limbs, seemingly supporting the whole structure. This design for a cartouche, a decorative framing device, was part of a series of 24 prints made after drawings by Federico Zuccaro, an influential artist in Rome. The cartouches could have been used as models for coats of arms, painted or sculpted decorations, or simply as examples of fertile graphic invention. Zuccaro’s cartouches reflect Renaissance Europe’s taste for grotesque ornament. Inspired by ancient paintings found in Emperor Nero’s palace, grotesque decoration delighted in extravagant, fantastic invention, merging ornament with figural details.

i/ii
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Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Cartouche with the accession number of 69.165.4. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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