Françoise Bouzonnet Stella’s engraving, “Jug in the Form of a Bearded Man Blowing a Horn”, 1657

Françoise Bouzonnet Stella (1638–1691)

“Jug in the Form of a Bearded Man Blowing a Horn”, 1657, plate 17 from the series of fifty engravings (including the title plate), “Livre de vases inventé par Mr Stella chevalier et peintre du roy”, after the designs by her uncle, Jacques Stella (1596–1657), published in 1667 by her sister, Claudine Bouzonnet Stella (aka Claudia Bouzonnet-Stella; Claudia Stella; Claudine Bouzonnet) (1636–1697), in Paris.

See this print and the other plates in the publication, “Livre de vases” (1667), offered for viewing online or for downloading free-of-charge at artchive.org: https://archive.org/details/gri_33125010670459/page/n35/mode/2up.

Engraving on fine laid paper trimmed with a thread margin around the image borderline and backed with a support sheet to address restorations and losses to the print.

Size: 28.1 x 20.6 cm.

Numbered on plate: (lower right corner) “17”.

Berlin 1939 1048 (P Jessen 1939, “Katalog der Ornamentstichsammlung der Staatlichen Kunstbibliothek Berlin”, Berlin); IFF 115–161 (Inventaire du Fonds Français: Bibliothèque Nationale, Département des Estampes, Paris, 1930); Fuhring 2004 2030 (Peter Fuhring 2004, “Ornament Prints in the Rijksmuseum: the Seventeenth Century”); Guilmard 1880/1 50.54(5) (Désiré Guilmard 1801, “Les Maitres Ornemanistes: Écoles Française, Italienne, Allemande et des Pays-Bas [Flamande et Hollandaise], Paris, E Pron et Cie).

The British Museum offers the following description of this print:

“Plate 17: a vase in the shape of a bearded man blowing a horn, which serves as spout; the handle is formed by a duck. 1657 Engraving”

(https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=3352002&partId=1&searchText=Fran%25u00e7oise+Stella+plate+17&page=1).

Condition: richly inked, strong impression, trimmed close to the image borderline with replenished losses at the upper and lower left corners and restorations of chips to the edges. The sheet has significant restorations—not visually arresting—and has been laid upon a support sheet of archival (millennium quality) washi paper to address these issues.

I am selling this curiously wonderful engraving of a lidded jug fashioned so that the spout is a horn blown by a bearded man with the handle of the jug formed to be a happily strangled duck—but note the duck’s slightly menacing eye!—for the total cost of AU$233 (currently US$148.27/EUR136.30/GBP118.54 at the time of this listing) 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 beautifully executed engraving by one of the rare female engravers of the Baroque period, 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