Name: Melancolie
Brand: AFTER DOMENICO FETTI (CIRCA 1589-1624)
Price: 850.00 USD
Availability: SoldOut

AFTER DOMENICO FETTI (CIRCA 1589-1624)
Melancolie
engraving, circa 1618-30, on laid paper, watermark Bunch of Grapes, a very good, strong impression of this very rare print, published by Jean Richer, Paris, circa 1620-30, trimmed to or just outside the subject and underneath the text below, with a horizontal central printer's crease, a few small holes, nicks and creases
Sheet 386 x 273 mm.

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Lot Essay

Domenico Fetti painted this young woman in contemplation of a skull in three versions, which are today at the Louvre, Paris, at the Accademia in Venice and the Ferdinandeum at Innsbruck. The version in Venice is considered the earliest, the one in Paris is thought to be painted around 1618-23. Quite clearly inspired by Albrecht Dürer's famous master print Melencolia I (1514), with direct citations of the dog, the sphere, the compass and the hour glass, Fetti's interpretation is however much more a memento mori-image, an reflection on mortality, than a complex allegory of the melancholic temperament.
The present, anonymous engraving is inscribed underneath the image: Pi(?)elli del:& scul.Romae. avec priuat.du Roy se venda Paris par J. Richer rue gervais laurent pres le palais au trois perles.
It is to our knowledge unrecorded and predates Thomassin's well-known etched version by about a century. The publisher Jean Richer was active in Paris during the first quarter of the 17th century and thus a contemporary of the painter.