Friezes after Giulio Romano, in Palazzo del Te

Antoinette Bouzonnet Stella

1675 · Intaglio title and 3 plates · Drawings and Prints

During his artistic studies in Italy in the early 1660s, Antoine Bouzonnet Stella drew copies of Giulio Romano’s stucco frieze at the Palazzo del Te in Mantua. After his return to Paris, Antoine shared the drawings with his sister Antoinette, who reproduced them in a series of twenty-four etchings. In 1675, their older sister Claudine published the etchings under commission from Jean Baptiste Colbert, the superintendent of Royal Buildings, Arts, and Manufactories for Louis XIV. As an allegory of Claudine’s leadership of her family workshop and artistic instruction of her sisters, the dedication page illustrates Bellona, the Roman goddess of war, watching over two women seated atop the central cartouche. Yasemin Altun, June 2024

Artist

Antoinette Bouzonnet Stella

Date

1675

Medium

Intaglio title and 3 plates

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951