The Chinese Ambassador, plate fifteen from Caravanne du Sultane à la Mecque
c. 1748
Medium
Etching on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 19.1 × 12.9 cm (7 9/16 × 5 1/8 in.); Plate: 20.5 × 13.5 cm (8 1/8 × 5 3/8 in.); Sheet: 22.8 × 17.3 cm (9 × 6 13/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
157564
Art Historical Context
In the mid-18th century, French artist Joseph-Marie Vien captured the European imagination's fascination with the exotic East through his series *Caravanne du Sultane à la Mecque* (Caravan of the Sultana to Mecca). This etching, titled *The Chinese Ambassador* and designated as plate fifteen, dates to around 1748. Vien, a pivotal figure bridging Rococo elegance and emerging Neoclassicism, depicted an intriguing multicultural scene: a Chinese diplomat amid a grand pilgrimage caravan bound for Mecca. Such imagery reflected the era's growing curiosity about distant cultures, fueled by travel acco...
About the Artist
Joseph Marie Vien, I · 1716–1809
Joseph-Marie Vien (1716–1809) was born in Montpellier and trained in Paris under Charles-Joseph Natoire. A brilliant student, he won the Prix de Rome in 1743 and spent the years 1744 to 1750 at the French Academy in Rome, where his encounter with the antiquarian scholarship of the Comte de Caylus and the early stirrings of neoclassical taste around the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii proved...