Illustration to Samuel Richardson's Clarissa
Medium
Etching on paper
Dimensions
Image: 11.9 × 6.8 cm (4 11/16 × 2 11/16 in.); Plate: 16.6 × 21.1 cm (6 9/16 × 8 5/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
152358
Art Historical Context
Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki's *Illustration to Samuel Richardson's* (1796) captures a poignant moment from one of the 18th century's most influential novels. Richardson's *Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady* (1748), an epistolary masterpiece, explores of virtue, seduction, and tragedy through the life of its protagonist. Created nearly five decades after the book's publication, Chodowie's etching reflects the enduring popularity of this sentimental tale in Europe, particularly in Germany, where moral and emotional narratives resonated deeply during the Enlightenment. As a leading engrav...
About the Artist
Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki · 1726–1801
Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki (1726–1801) was a German painter and printmaker of Polish-Huguenot descent who became the most celebrated graphic artist in 18th-century Germany. Born in Danzig (now Gdańsk), he created approximately 2,000 etchings that serve as an invaluable visual record of German bourgeois life during the Enlightenment. Largely self-taught, Chodowiecki moved to Berlin in 1743 and ach...