Bacchanal with wooden barrel

Nine naked Bacchanal children in landscape: from left, one child standing and facing backwards; one lying on ground drinking from a vessel which is hold up by another child; three looking towards right; one seated on top of a barrel and holding a cup and a vessel; one standing next to the barrel and pointing towards right; one seated on ground holding a large vessel with both hands.

Etching with engraving in brown ink, lettered below image with artists' names 'Marcantonio Franceschini inv./ F. Bartolozzi sculp. in Londra 1765'.

First state of two, printed on contemporary laid paper, with margins, very good condition.

Francesco Bartolozzi, the son of a Florentine goldsmith, met German engraver Joseph Wagner at whose workshop, the most important in Venice, where he moved in August 1748. In the lagoon city Bartolozzi remained for sixteen years, participating in artistic life and coming into contact with major publishers and printers, as well as men of culture. He alternated between his own works and translations by other artists in collaboration with Wagner, such as the series devoted to Guercino to which he devoted himself almost exclusively between 1761 and 1765. These are the years when Bartolozzi becomes the owner of his own workshop. He then moved to England, where he stayed for about forty years, and where he devoted himself mainly to the activity of translation, alternating with equal success between interpreting the works of famous painters of the past and those of his contemporaries. In addition to drawings by Guercino in the royal collection, the artist reproduced drawings by the Carracci, Pietro da Cortona, Guido Reni, Carlo Maratta, and his friend Giovan Battista Cipriani.

Bibliografia

Calabi & De Vesme 1928 / Francesco Bartolozzi. Catalogue des estampes et notice biographique d'après les manuscrits de A. De Vesme entièrement réformés et complétés d'une étude critique par A. Calabi (1255).