Frans Huys after Cornelis Floris. Plate from a suite of 18 designs for masks entitled 'Pourtraicture ingenieuse de plusieurs facons de Masques'. Flemish, 1555.

Facial mask composed of vegetation with snakes coming out of the eye sockets, apples, pears, grapes, carrots and garlands and a shell motif at the crown.

In the dripping fishy style originally developed for grotto decoration in the 1500s, which later came to be known as auricular. From a set of at least 18.

[The following taken from old card catalogue]
Guilmard records 20 plates. Hedicke suggests that they are from original drawings by Cornelis Floris, an attribution which is accepted by Hollstein and mentioned by Berlin. However there exists a set of reversed copies bearing the monogram of the master called Jesus Christ and also signed 'Renatus B.L. Fecit' and dated 1560, eg E.57-1896. A similar set of reversed copies exists without the lined background, E.301-8-1928. The set was copied in the 18th century. Two impressions printed in sepia from this set are in the V&A, E.943-4-1886. The designs were freely used by Aloisio Giovannoli (c. 1550-1618) in the composition of his book of masks. Five impressions of these are in the V&A, E.1237-1241-1923. It is these to which Destailleur mistakenly refers as the original of Huys' designs and as by Angelo Veientano. There is a second state with the name of a second publisher added, 'Iac. Honoruogt excudit'. This state is reproduced by Hedicke.

This print, from a set of 18, shows a mask composed of forms of sea creature. It is in the 'grotesque' style derived from ancient Roman prototypes, which took inspiration from fish and animal forms or from vegetation.

Frans Huys based his prints on original designs by Cornelis Floris (1514-1575), who is credited with inventing a Flemish version of the grotesque style in about 1541. Floris was a sculptor who studied in Rome in about 1538, where the Emperor Nero’s palace, called the Domus Aurea (Golden Palace), had recently been rediscovered below ground level.

This plate comes from a set published in 1555 by Hans Liefrinck (about 1518-1573), an important Antwerp publisher and print-seller.

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