25. Jean-Michel Moreau, le Jeune
(1741-1814)
Les Petits Parains

(click on image to print)
Moreau, Les Petits Parains

Les Petits Parains

Etching and engraving, 1776-7, from the Monument du Costume, 410 x 325 mm., Lawrence & Dighton 224 iv/iv, Bocher 1353 vii/vii. Fine, clear impression on laid paper with full, large margins; minor damages at the sheet edges. Moreau’s Monument du Costume was one of the glories of engraving of the French eighteenth century, a suite of twenty-four plates of a variety of genre subjects composing a virtual history of fashion in France in that era. Oddly, though the set is always listed as being by Moreau, and he himself was a superb and prolific engraver, the plates were engraved by a number of different men, in the case of this one, Charles Baquoy and J. B. Patas. The costumes, of course, are glorious, but it is the lighting from the torch, with its theatrical effect on the faces and figures, that makes this print so entrancing. The title, correctly "Parrains", means The Little Godparents -- clearly of a new-born member of the family.