Design: Grouped Figures, from Encyclopédie
1762/77
Medium
Etching, with engraving, on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 32 × 21 cm (12 5/8 × 8 5/16 in.); Plate: 35.3 × 22.1 cm (13 15/16 × 8 3/4 in.); Sheet: 40 × 26 cm (15 3/4 × 10 1/4 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
148248
Art Historical Context
In the grand intellectual project of the 18th-century *Encyclopédie*, edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert Benoît-Louis Prév contributed this elegant etching, *Design: Grouped Figures* (1762/77). Published between 1751 and 1772, the *Encyclopédie* sought to democratize knowledge through thousands of detailed illustrations spanning arts, sciences, and trades. Prévost, a skilled French engraver, captured dynamic groupings of figures likely intended as studies for artists, demonstrating human anatomy, proportion, and composition in the Rococo spirit of graceful movement and Enlight...