18. Pierre Brebiette
(1598?-1642)

Woman Nursing Her Child While Looking in a Mirror

(click on image to print)
Brebiette, Woman Nursing

Woman Nursing Her Child While Looking in a Mirror

Etching, Bibliothèque National Inventaire 237, LeBlanc N.D., 82 x 94 mm. Very fine impression on laid paper with good margins. The print has been called “the most inventive and the most delicate of all Brebiette's etchings” (Léon Rosenthal, La Gravure, 1909). It is, in fact, a most unusual and sympathetic composition, the baby greatly foreshortened (in the manner of Bartel Beham), the mother's face seen from the side and then, in all its loveliness, in the mirrored reflection. The background is strongly and variably shaded, eliminating any distractive elements. Beautiful print and certainly Brebiette’s best. LeBlanc, apparently, did not even know of its existence. Framed.