Prints
Tomb with Sphinxes and an Owl
PrintFunerary Object
Details
- Author / creator
- Louis Jean Desprez (French, 1743–1804)
- Object type
- Date or period
- c. 1779–84
- Dimensions summary
- Platemark: 34 × 48.7 cm; Sheet: 35 × 50.3 cm
- Place of origin
- France
- Acquisition method
- Purchase
- Credit line
- Purchased with the Hartley Bequest Fund, 2018
- Paper / support
- Wove paper
- State and impression
- Only state
- Catalogue raisonné
- Wollin 28
About this object
Originally trained as an architect, Louis Jean Desprez produced this print depicting a tomb while living in Rome. He combined details observed while visiting catacombs in southern Italy with macabre inventions, such as the pair of feet visible from within the sculptural space. Desprez creatively used aquatint—a printmaking technique that produces shades of gray—to render the space’s dramatic shadows and stone surfaces.
Materials and technique
Aquatint with etching
Signature and marks
inscribed in graphite on verso: 1881 / 10; watermark and countermark: fleur de lis enclosed in a circle, (right side of sheet); VM’TORJ, (est.), (left side of the sheet)
