Antoine Vitré
1640/50
Medium
Etching, with stipple in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image/sheet, trimmed within platemark: 31.2 × 21.3 cm (12 5/16 × 8 7/16 in.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
154430
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Little known today, Jean Morin was among the most influential printmakers in 17th-century France. He devised a unique method for portraiture, using a mixture of line and stipple to enhance tonal contrast and create a finely textured background for the etched features. He made about 50 prints after portraits by his father-in-law, Philippe de Champaigne. Antoine Vitré was a Parisian printer and bookseller who specialized in non-Roman alphabets. Unusually straightforward in his stance, the subject ...
About the Artist
Jean Morin · 1605–1650
Jean Morin (c. 1605–1650) was one of the most accomplished French engravers of the seventeenth century, a master of the portrait print whose work stands among the finest examples of French graphic art in its era. Little is known about his early life or training, though his technique suggests exposure to both French and Flemish engraving traditions, the latter being the dominant force in European p...