Johann Gottfried Haid’s mezzotint of a young woman with a boy wearing a turban, c1750, after Giovanni Battista Piazzetta

Johann Gottfried Haid (aka John Gottfried Haid) (1714–1776)

“Young woman with a boy wearing a turban” (descriptive title only—note that I have seen the portrayed young woman given the name “Julia” in some websites), c1750, after Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (aka Giambattista Piazzetta) (1682–1754).

Mezzotint on laid paper, trimmed with a small margin around the image borderline and backed with a support sheet.

Size: (sheet) 34.5 x 27.7 cm; (image borderline) 33.5 x 27.1 cm

Inscribed on plate below the image borderline: (left) “Iohann Baptista Piazzetta Venetus delineavit”; (right) “Iohann Gottfried Haid sculpsit”

Condition: richly inked and well-printed impression with many (almost invisible) restorations, trimmed with a small margin around the image borderline and retaining the text line below the image borderline and backed with a support sheet of archival (millennium quality) washi paper.

I am selling this spectacular mezzotint for the total cost of AU$216 (currently US$160.08/EUR136.73/GBP121.06 at the time of posting this print) including postage and handling to anywhere in the world (but not, of course, any import duties/taxes imposed by some countries).

If you are interested in purchasing this rare—so rare that the neither the British Museum nor the Rijksmuseum hold a copy—large and luminously glowing old-master print, please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.

This print has been sold

For those that like comparing prints, this mezzotint by Johann Gottfried Haid (1714–1776) is a perfect print for close study. Not only did the printmaker’s younger brother, Johann Lorenz Haid (1702–1750), execute a similar mezzotint after the same draughtsman designer, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1682–1754) featured in my earlier post (see http://www.printsandprinciples.com/2018/04/johann-lorenz-haids-mezzotint-of-young.html), but the technically remarkable, Marco Pitteri (1702–1786), make an engraving of the same composition as this print in reverse (see http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1418781&partId=1&searchText=Piazzetta&page=1 & http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.165225).

From a personal standpoint, what I find interesting in comparing the three printmakers— Johann Gottfried Haid, Johann Lorenz Haid and Marco Pitteri—is their different approaches to rendering form. In the case of Johann Gottfried, note how he uses reflected light to give luminosity to the shadow areas of his figures and employs haloes of light (for example around the boy’s fingers) to separate spatial planes. By contrast, his brother, Johann Lorenz, invests his figures (see the link to my earlier post above) with an almost theatrical lighting in which reflected light seems to bounce around the composition giving his subject a dramatic edge. Regarding Marco Pitteri’s engraving in reverse (see the link above), Pitteri’s approach to rendering light and shade is startling different as described by the British Museum:

“… an original method of engraving (not etching), using parallel lines, which are thickened at regular intervals along their length with more deeply engraved sections.” (http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=111323).