Rêtif de la Bretonne: The Little Godparents
Medium
etching and engraving
Classification
Department
Prints
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Anne Elizabeth Wilson Memorial Fund
Accession Number
1980.51
Tags
male
About this artwork
Moreau was a printmaker and book illustrator, known best for his ability to depict fashion, poses, and gestures. Published in Monument du costume physique et morale, a suite of prints portraying the manners and dress of fashionable society at the end of the 1700s, this scene is part of a sequence narrating the pregnancy and birth of a young couple’s first son. Here, a superbly dressed boy and girl exit a mansion toward a waiting coach; behind them, a wet nurse carries their godson, whose gesturi...