Listoire de lenfant prodigue [graphic].

Listoire de lenfant prodigue [graphic].

[France] : I. le Clerc excud, [between 1600 and 1627?]

6 prints : engravings ; plate marks 150 x 185 mm or smaller on sheets 168 x 236 mm or smaller.

paper

Six consecutively numbered engravings by the Lorraine painter and engraver Jean le Clerc illustrating the fall and redemption of the Biblical Prodigal Son. The title engraving portrays the prodigal son demanding his inheritance from his father; subsequent plates depict him traveling to a distant city, squandering his fortune on wine and women, being driven outside the city gates, praying for redemption among the pigs, and returning in humility to his father. With detailed depictions of contemporary costume and realistic domestic interiors. (Adapted from dealer's description)

Titles in French, verses below images in Latin.

Title from caption on first print.

Plate marks all approximately the same size.

According to Inventaire du fonds français. Graveurs du XVIIe siècle (Weigert), Le Clerc evidently took this integral series from a larger suite of 14 engravings by Boetius A. Bolswert, based in turn on works by Abraham Bloemaert.

Bibliothèque nationale (France). Cabinet des estampes. Inventaire du fonds français. Graveurs du XVIIe siècle, v. 7, p. 470-471, no. 4-17

France.

ART Vol. e271

In 21st-century binding; faint manuscript numbers at the top center of each page, cropped, but evidently '93' through '98'; head of left-hand figure in pl. 1 and mounted figure in pl. 2 damaged.

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