Artist: Bernard Picart (1673-1733) engraver, after Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) painter and Jean-Marc Nattier (1685-1766) draughtsman
Title: La Felicité de la Regence (The Felicity of the Regency)
Date: c. 1710
School: French XVIIIth-century
Medium: engraving and etching
Dimensions: 503 x 357mm (plate), 600 x 420mm (support)
Watermark: DUPUY, see image below
Inscriptions/marks: in the plate lower left <<B.P 1704>> Painter, draughtsman and engraver details in the plate lower left and lower right <<Rubens pinxit>> <<I. M. Nattier delineavit B. Picard Sculpsit>>. Title and description in the plate lower border <<La Felicité de la Regence/….. la France au siècle d’or>>. Address in the plate lower right border <<A Paris chez le Sr Nattier Peintre de l’Academie Royale rue Frementeau Avec Privilege du Roy>>
Condition: fine condition, printed on laid paper with a clear DUPUY watermark and generous margins
Description: Marie de’ Medici as the personification of Justice enthroned with a pair of scales in her hands, flanked by Cupid and Minerva, on the left Prudence and Abundance and on the right Time bringing France before the Queen; four putti in the foreground symbolizing the Arts and trampling the Vices (Envy, Ignorance and Vice); two Fames blowing trumpets in the upper part. Based on the painting by Rubens for the Luxembourg Gallery, now in the Louvre.
Literature: The Bibliothèque nationale de France has the king’s copy of the complete set of engravings after Rubens’s paintings, also including the original sanguine scale drawings from which the prints were made by Jean-Marc and Jean-Baptiste Nattier. The whole volume has been digitised.
