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Portrait of Louis XV

A work made of mezzotint with etching, in black, brown, blue, and white, with traces of red ink on ivory laid paper.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • A work made of mezzotint with etching, in black, brown, blue, and white, with traces of red ink on ivory laid paper.

Date:

1739

Artist:

Jacob Christoph Le Blon (German, 1667-1741)
after Nicolas Blakey (Irish, died 1758)

About this artwork

Jacques Gautier D’Agoty worked as an apprentice in Jacob Christoph Le Blon’s Paris studio for a few weeks in 1738. After Le Blon’s death, he argued that he had improved Le Blon’s color mezzotint process by adding a fourth plate and opportunistically claimed the exclusive right to use the process, by order of Louis XV. Gautier D’Agoty also insisted that—unlike Le Blon—his prints did not rely on hand retouching or highlighting. This portrait of their mutual patron includes both a black plate and etched white highlighting in the hair. The red pigment applied to the lips has faded, and so determining whether Le Blon’s portrait seems closer to a waxed figure than Gautier D’Agoty’s anatomy studies is for the viewer to judge.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Prints and Drawings

Artist

Jacob Christoph Le Blon

Title

Portrait of Louis XV

Place

Germany (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1739

Medium

Mezzotint with etching, in black, brown, blue, and white, with traces of red ink on ivory laid paper

Dimensions

61.8 × 46 cm (24 3/8 × 18 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

William McCallin McKee Memorial Collection

Reference Number

1927.390

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/34306/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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