Design for a Frontispiece: A Man Guiding a Crowned Woman and her Attendants to the Entrance of a Palace

Grégoire Huret

ca. 1640–60 · Pen and brown ink, brush and gray wash over traces of black chalk · Drawings and Prints

Huret was an inventive draftsman and printmaker who was admired for his mastery of elaborate architecture and perspective, the refinement of his figures, and the preciosity of his technique. Although its subject has yet to be identified, this recently discovered sheet is remarkable for its rich rendering of ornament and pattern. A regal young woman, apparently a queen, is led toward an ornate palace, followed by her retinue. Putti cavort in the clouds overhead bearing a banderole left blank for a title, suggesting that the drawing may have been a design for a print. The inscription at lower left indicates that a past owner believed the drawing to be by Abraham van Diepenbeeck, a seventeenth-century Flemish artist.

Artist

Grégoire Huret

Date

ca. 1640–60

Medium

Pen and brown ink, brush and gray wash over traces of black chalk

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Purchase, Charles and Jessie Price Gift and funds from various donors, 2018