Portrait of Marie Antoinette
late 18th century
Medium
Stipple engraving, printed in colors
Dimensions
sheet: 10 13/16 x 8 3/4 in. (27.4 x 22.2 cm) oval image: 8 1/16 x 6 5/8 in. (20.5 x 16.9 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Susan Dwight Bliss, 1956
Accession Number
56.558.23
Tags
Art Historical Context
This delicate stipple engraving captures the poised elegance of Marie Antoinette, the iconic queen consort of France from 1774 to 1792. Created anonymously by a French artist in the late 18th, the oval portrait—measuring about 8 x6½ inches—exifies the period's fascination with royal imagery. Printed in color, a rarity for engravings typically rendered in monochrome, it allowed for vibrant hues that brought the queen's refined features to life, making such prints accessible to a wider audience beyond the court. Stipple engraving, a technique using fine dots to create subtle gradations of tone ...
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...