Etching
- Place of origin:
- Date:
- Artist/Maker:
Gaetano Brunetti (designer)
Henry Fletcher (etcher)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Museum number:
- Gallery location:
British Galleries, room 53b, case 2
- Download image
Object Type
This print is an etching, which uses the action of acid to create lines on a metal printing plate. This printed sheet is from a book entitled Sixty Different Sorts of Ornaments Invented by Gaetano Brunetti Italian Painter. Very Usefull to Painters, Sculptors, Stone-Carvers, Wood-Carvers, Silversmiths &c. published in 1736-1737. The whole design could be seen and copied with the aid of a mirror.
Designs & Designers
Gaetano Brunetti (active 1731-1758) had designed and painted mural decorations at the town houses of the James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos, and Charles Bennet, 2nd Earl of Tankerville, and others in the early 1730s. As a kind of advertisement for his work, and a memorial of it, he provided designs for his book derived from ideas he had used in his mural paintings. This printed design could be adapted for two- or three-dimensional work in various media. A Rococo cartouche is, among other things, an elaborate and often fanciful decorative surround for an inscription, a title, or a picture, on objects as diverse as a book frontispiece or a silver cup. Prints like this one ensured the rapid dissemination of the Rococo style in Britain.
Place of Origin
London, England (etched)
Date
1736 (made)
Artist/maker
Gaetano Brunetti (designer)
Henry Fletcher (etcher)
Materials and Techniques
Etching, ink on paper
Marks and inscriptions
Signed 'H.Fletcher Sculp.'; lettered 'G.Brunetti inv et del.'
Dimensions
Height: 16.5 cm paper, Width: 11.1 cm paper (cut)
Object history note
Plate from 'Sixty Different Sorts of Ornaments'Designed by Gaetano Brunetti (born in Lombardy, Italy, active 1731, died in Paris, 1758); etched in London by Henry Fletcher (active 1715-1738)
Descriptive line
Design for a cartouche
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Snodin, Michael (ed.), assisted by Elspeth Moncrieff, Rococo: Art and Design in Hogarth’s England (exh. cat.: The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 16 May – 30 September 1984), 38.
The following is the full text from the publication:
"B11 Designs for a chair, a picture frame and a cartouche
Henry Fletcher (active 1715-1738)
After Gaetano Brunetti (active 1731, d. 1758).
1736-7
Etchings; 166 x 115; 165 x 111 (cut)
Each lettered with a publication line dated 25 June 1736 and G. Brunetti inv. et del. N. Fletcher Sculp.
VAM (20329.8; E.295-1897)
From Brunetti’s Sixty Different Sorts of Ornaments… Very useful to painters, sculptors, stone-carvers, wood-carvers, silversmiths, etc. (61 plates and title-page, engraved by Fletcher and Jean Rocque). The publication proposal was advertised in 1736 (Daily Gazetteer, 28 June); the suites were delivered to subscribers in 1737 (Daily Post, 16 May). Some plates are dated February 1737 within the design. This single cartouche was copied, with several others from the suite, by Augustin Heckel (see Cat. H2) and by James Paine on the pediment of the Doncaster Mansion House, 1745-8 (Cat. M2) Other plates were used for a Dublin silver coffee-pot of 1737 (Ashmolean Museum), and in later contexts (Cat. B13). The suite appears in Rocque’s list of publications dated 1742. J.M. Rysbrack’s copy is at the Avery Library, New York (information from Peter Fuhring). Most of the plates are based on mural decoration (the Daily Gazetteer connected them with Brunetti’s painting at the town houses of the Duke of Tankerville and other houses), but there are six plates of furniture designs. As in the present case, they are very reminiscent of contemporary Italian examples. A chair in a very similar plate from the suite was copied for Cat. B12. Brunetti, a Lombard, whose earliest English mural decoration was carried out 1730-31, worked in the north Italian style of quadratura. In 1739 he left England for Paris, where he died. Drawings for the suite are at Waddesdon Manor and the Ecole des beaux Arts, paris.
Lit: Berlin 1939, 587; Croft-Murray 1970, 176; Ward-Jackson 1958, 27
MS"
Labels and date
British Galleries:
These prints are from the first British pattern book to include Rococo motifs. Gaetano Brunetti was an Italian decorative painter. The strong asymmetrical arrangement of motifs is typical of Rococo. [27/03/2003]
Categories
Prints; Designs
Collection code
PDP
