La Toilette de Vénus (The Toilet of Venus), from Recueil de Différentes Compositions Frises et Ornements dessinées et gravées à la manière du lavis par La Grenée le Juene Se trouve chez l'Auteur, au Louvre et chez Basan, rue et Hôtel Serpente A Paris, in an album containing Recueil de Compositions par Lagrenée Le Jeune (Collection of Compositions by Lagrenée the Younger)
Medium
Etching and aquatint
Dimensions
Sheet: 15 13/16 × 21 7/16 in. (40.2 × 54.5 cm) Plate: 8 1/4 × 18 in. (20.9 × 45.7 cm)
Classification
Prints|Ornament & Architecture
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, The Arthur Ross Foundation Gift and Charles Z. Offin Fund, 1999
Accession Number
1999.2(17)
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the elegant world of 18th-century French decorative arts with *La Toilette de Vénus* (The Toilet of Venus an enchanting etching and aquatint by Jean-Jacques Lagrenée the Younger, created in 1784 Part of his *Recueil de Différ Compositions Frises et Ornements*a collection of friezes and ornamental designs—this print captures the goddess of love in a moment of intimate beauty, surrounded by attendants in a classical tableau. Lagrenée, a prominent Rococo artist transitioning toward Neoclassicism, drew inspiration from mythological themes popular in the opulent salons of pre-Revolutionar...
About the Artist
Jean Jacques Lagrenée · 1739–1821
Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, known as Lagrenée the Younger (1739–1821), was a distinguished French history painter, draftsman, and engraver born into a family of artists in Paris. The younger brother of the prominent Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée (Lagrenée the Elder), he studied under his elder sibling at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris, honing his skills in the rigorous academic t...