Figures & Portraits
€ 240
One of a kind: this is the sheet in the photographs. Ships from Langweer, the Netherlands.
Original/contemporary hand coloring. General age-related toning, Minor wear and soiling, blank verso. Please study image carefully.
Antique print titled 'MADAME DE GRIGNAN' Original antique print of Françoise-Marguerite de Sévigné, Countess of Grignan.
Françoise-Marguerite was born in Paris, France, on 10 October 1646, in the fashionable Place des Vosges. She was the first child of Henri de Sévigné and his young wife, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal. Two years later, at the family's Château des Rochers-Sévigné in Brittany, her brother, Charles de Sévigné, was born. In 1651, Henri was killed in a duel over his mistress, Madame de Gondran. Now a widow, the Marquise de Sévigné took her children back to Paris where they came to live with her uncle, l'abbé de Coulanges, in the Marais district.
After her mother became well-established in the royal court of Louis XIV, 17-year-old Françoise-Marguerite made her court debut in the Royal Ballets des Arts, dancing a lead role as a shepherdess alongside Louis, himself, as a shepherd. She was a sensation. Isaac de Benserade referred to Mademoiselle de Sévigné as "A dazzling young beauty". The Marquis de Tréville wrote that she was "a beauty to set the world afire".
This print originates from ' LA MÉSANGÈRE, Pierre and LANTÉ, Louis Marie. Costumes des Femmes Françaises du XIIe au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Librairie Charles Tallandier, 1900.
This beautiful work tracing changes in French costume from the 12th to 18th century, stunning folio-sized hand-colored engraved plates depicting period fashions on famous French women who were celebrated for their talent or their beauty in the relevant periods.
