7. Jean-François Janinet (1752-1814)
after Jean-Baptiste Dagoty

Marie Antoinette

(click on image to print)
Janinet, Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette

Tool-work engraving, in colors, 1777, 410 x 320 mm., Portalis & Béraldi 132, trial proof. Provenance: Eldridge James (not in Lugt); Mrs. Arthur James (not in L.). One of the great classic portraits of the eighteenth century in a superb impression. The portrait itself is in the completed state, printed in colors from four plates and laid down on the frame; the ornamental frame is in a trial proof state before the addition of the blue, but with the printed metallic gold, on thick laid paper with small margins; some old binding holes at the left edge, an associated repaired tear and a surface abrasion, barely affecting the inked surface at the edge. Of great rarity in any state, the print was the crowning glory of several of the great past collections of French eighteenth-century color prints and lacking in many of them (the Halsey collection had only a copy and the Model collection an impression of the central portrait without the frame).