Narcissus
17th century
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
sheet: 2 15/16 x 4 1/2 in. (7.5 x 11.5 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase,The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1956
Accession Number
56.533.2
Tags
Art Historical Context
Laurent de La Hyre's *Narcissus*, a delicate 17th-century etching captures the timeless Greek myth of the youth entranced by his own reflection Measuring just 2 15/16 x 4 1/2 inches, this intimate print from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's and Prints department invites close contemplation. La Hyre, a prominent French artist of the Baroque era with Classicist leanings, often depicted mythological themes with refined elegance, blending narrative grace and emotional depth. Etching, the medium here, was a revolutionary printmaking technique in the 1600s, where acid etches intricate lines into a ...
About the Artist
Laurent de La Hyre · 1606–1656
Laurent de La Hyre (1606–1656) was a French painter whose elegant, classical compositions placed him among the finest artists of the first generation of French Baroque painters working in Paris. Born into an artistic family — his father Étienne de La Hyre was also a painter — Laurent received his early training largely through independent study rather than formal apprenticeship under a single domi...