E.148 Anonymous, Birth of Venus

Etching, Anonymous, possibly by Master I.♀.V.?, 34.2 x 49.7 S (Paris).

Fig.E.148 (Paris)

Bartsch, XVI, 1818, 405, 75, as Anonymous, School of Fontainebleau, after Rosso.  Herbet, II, 1896, 66 (1969, 218), 41, as Anonymous, perhaps by Fantuzzi, after Rosso.

COLLECTIONS: Florence.  Paris, Ba 12.  Vienna, Vol. H.B.IV, p.73, 85, damaged at upper left and repaired.

LITERATURE:

Kusenberg, 1931, 168, as Anonymous, in the manner of Fantuzzi.

Zerner, 1972, 119, Fig. 180, as by Master I.♀.V.

Béguin and Pressouyre, 1972, 140.

Zerner, IB, 33, 1979, 350 (Paris).

Boorsch, 1988, 9, Fig. 4, as by Master I.♀.V.

Béguin, 1989, 835, 836, Fig. 32 (Paris), 837, as by Master I.♀.V.

Boorsch, in French Renaissance, 1994, 229-231, no. 33, Fig. (Paris, Ba 12, Vol. 1), as by Master I.♀.V., the naked youth inside Venus’s chariot identified as probably Cupid.

This etching is related, in reverse, to the stucco relief beneath the Enlightenment of Francis I in the Gallery of Francis I.  However, the print is much too detailed to have been derived from that relief.  But in its details, such as the hair and the musculature of the male figures, it is very much in Rosso’s style.  In spite of a certain awkwardness in the description of the figure of Venus, the etching appears based on a lost drawing by Rosso.  The etcher has undoubtedly added what appears outside the shell.