[Full-sheet woodcut, depicting a winged, bare-breasted siren with a slender length of cloth draped over her arms] [graphic].

[Full-sheet woodcut, depicting a winged, bare-breasted siren with a slender length of cloth draped over her arms] [graphic].

[Paris, after 1569]

1 item ; 446 x 380 mm

This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.

France -- Paris, -- publication place.

273167

From dealer's description: "[MURAL WOODCUT] [After ?CERCEAU, Jacques Ier Androuet de] [Grotesque of an infernal siren]. S.l., s.n., s.d. [?Paris: after 1569.] Only known copy of a remarkable full-sheet woodcut, depicting a winged, bare-breasted siren with a slender length of cloth draped over her arms. The woodcut most certainly formed a portion of a much larger composite scene, and given its rather provocative features, would likely have been used to decorate a wall or a ceiling in a bedroom, or even a brothel. This type of wall covering is a relatively recent innovation in the history of decorative arts, having first been pioneered by Albrecht Durer and his student Sebald Beham, sometime between 1515 and 1525. Beham produced three known series of composite printed wall coverings, the best known being his Wallpaper with Nymphs and Satyrs (c1520-1525), which was made of several sheets that fit together to form an entrelac garden filled with birds and eroticized figures. According to Peter Parshall and David Landau, in their work The Renaissance Print 1470-1550, the idea of the erotic pervaded examples of largerscale printing from woodcuts during this period; indeed, our enigmatic siren is overtly sexual, as well as suggestively eroticized—mainly because of the two rutting, animalistic flowers flanking the siren. At first glance, she looks much like a twin-tailed mermaid,1 but the strange, decidedly non-angelic wings suggest the figure is some kind of infernal satyr of the artist's invention. What part she played in the larger printed scene is anybody's guess, as no other components have survived. The leftmost edge of the print is untrimmed, with a double-line border, and the other three edges trimmed to the printed area, suggesting that the woodcut was originally situated at left in the larger image, but not as a top or bottom corner. Stylistically, the imagery is highly reminiscent of the work of Jacques Androuet de Cerceau, l'architecte du roi, and the man who brought Renaissance architecture to France. There is no evidence that this print is his work, as de Cerceau's popular pattern books, Les petites grotesques (1550 and 1562), could easily have been copied by anyone sufficiently motivated to adapt his designs to large-scale composite-woodcut prints, and market them as wallpaper. Our exemplar is not only the earliest known example of printed French wallpaper by almost two centuries, but also bears traces of brushed-on paste on verso, suggesting that it was actually used as a wall covering, and was somehow removed intact. A sensational survival, and a unique witness to the practice of printing for architectural and decorative purposes in France in the last third of the sixteenth century."

Ordered from W.S. Cotter, D9836, 2025-07-25, email quote.

Purchase made possible by The Georges Lurcy Acquisitions Fund.

273167