The Constancy of Coriolanus

Jean François Janinet|Jean Guillaume Moitte

ca. 1778 · Etching and roulette · Drawings and Prints

Jean-Guillaume Moitte and Jean-François Janinet began collaborating around 1787, and this composition is typical of their work from the end of the eighteenth century. It illustrates a scene from the life of Caius Marcius Coriolanus, a Roman soldier and statesman from the fifth century B.C. whose biography appeared in Plutarch's Lives of the Notable Greeks and Romans (96-98 A.D.) and was the subject of William Shakespeare's last tragedy, Coriolanus (1608). A later version of the print bears an inscription explicating the scene, which shows Coriolanus, having been condemned to exile, bidding farewell to his wife, mother, and children.

Artist

Jean François Janinet|Jean Guillaume Moitte

Date

ca. 1778

Medium

Etching and roulette

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1963