La Justice, from the playing cards (for quartets) "Costumes des Peuples Étrangers"
Medium
Etching and hand coloring (watercolor)
Dimensions
3 3/16 × 2 1/16 in. (8.1 × 5.3 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of the Estate of James Hazen Hyde, 1959
Accession Number
59.654.17(7)
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the whimsical world of 18th French playing cards with *La Justice*, a delicate etching from the series *Costumes des Peuplestrangers* (Costumes of Foreign). This anonymous artwork, measuring just over 3 by 2 inches, captures Justice in vibrant hand-colored watercolor. She stands poised with her iconic scales and sword, her attire evoking exotic fashions from distant lands—blending European symbolism with imagined global styles, as suggested by tags like swords, women, fashion, and scales. Created between 1700 and 1799, these cards were designed for quartet games, a popular parlor pa...
About the Artist
Anonymous, French, 18th century · 1700–1800
The artist known as Anonymous, French, 18th century, represents a collective of unidentified talents active roughly between 1700 and 1800, a period of profound artistic evolution in France from the opulent Rococo to the austere dawn of Neoclassicism and Revolutionary fervor. Little is documented about their personal training or mentors, as their anonymity obscures individual biographies, though th...