Le Mariage (The Mariage from, the Vie des Satyres)

Description

Claude Gillot mocked the sanctity of marriage with this pastoral scene, part of a curious series on the life of satyrs. The text beneath describes the rite as a “Sad feast! in which love finds its entombment.” Apart from the oversized reading glasses on the presiding priest, the participants are surprisingly well behaved and straitlaced, considering the mythological creatures’ legendary appetite for lust. Indeed, the print connoisseur and dealer Pierre-Jean Mariette found the iconography of this group of Gillot’s prints particularly innovative.

Le Mariage (The Mariage from, the Vie des Satyres)

Claude Gillot

c.1722

Accession Number

129451

Medium

Etching with engraving on cream laid paper

Dimensions

Sheet, trimmed within platemark: 25.4 × 33.9 cm (10 × 13 3/8 in.)

Classification

etching

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection