Christ on the Cross

Object Type
Crucifixion scenes are fairly unusual in the repertory of images used on mid-18th century English enamel plaques. As Britain was staunchly anti-Catholic at the time, the likelihood is that a plaque such as this was intended for export to Ireland or the Roman Catholic countries of Continental Europe. The British Museum has a plaque virtually identical to this as well as four Ravenet saints, some or all of which may be designed as adjuncts to the Christ on the Cross.

Place
The plaque was made at York House, Battersea, the enamelling workshop founded in 1753 by Stephen Theodore Janssen (1705-1777), a prominent London merchant and politician. This factory, though very short-lived, produced some of the finest as well as earliest of all English transfer-printed enamels.

Materials & Making
The engraved lines of the copper plate from which this image was taken were filled with red ink. The plate was pressed onto special paper which was rubbed onto the milky-white background so typical of Battersea products. In firing, the image fused permanently with the enamel ground and the paper burned away. Delicate translucent colours - brown, yellow and crimson - were painted over the print but in no way obscure it.

People
The accomplished engraver Simon-Fran‡ois Ravenet the elder (1706-1774) trained in Paris under Jacques-Philippe Le Bas before moving to London in 1743-44 to engrave plates 4 and 5 of Hogarth's set of printsMarriage … la Mode. He spent much of his subsequent career producing views, portraits and book illustrations for publishers like Robert Sayer and John Boydell. He exhibited at the Society of Arts and the Royal Academy. During the period 1753-55 he probably concentrated almost entirely on his engravings for transfer-prints for York House, Battersea (he was certainly living in Battersea in 1755). Ravenet's work for Janssen consisted chiefly of graceful classical, mythological and allegorical scenes, though he also did portraits and heraldic devices.