(DEVOTION. DRESSED PRINTS). ~ [Saint Francis with the Virgin and Infant Christ; Saint Anthony of Padua. [France or Catholic Low Countries, eighteenth century]
Two dressed prints mounted on vellum (leaf sizes c. 180 × 132 mm, the prints slightly smaller). Cut prints, hand coloured with applied fabrics and ground glass. Margin of Saint Anthony slightly dusty, but both in a an excellent state of preservation.
The fashion for dressing prints existed probably from the origin of printed illustrations themselves, though it was a widespread, predominantly female recreation during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, often with a devotional intent.
The subjects here are Franciscan: Francis himself in a version of the legend of the appearance to him of the Virgin and Infant Christ, and Anthony of Padau in friar’s habit with an infant and a cherub. St Francis is the most elaborate of the two, with almost all of the cut print’s surface covered with colour, several silk brocade fabrics (brown, black, white and silver), gold paper highlights and glittering ground glass. Cherries on a tree above the group are rendered in tiny red wax spots, giving a round and shiny surface to each. The border is of black lacquer-like paint and gold paper, and an engraved Latin caption reads: ‘Quid parvum Francisce adeo miraris Iesu / Expecta pendens in cruce maior erit’. The surrounding parchment surface is illuminated with full borders of pink roses. Saint Anthony’s robe is rendered with a single piece of shiny brown silk, with narrow painted bands of the original print giving the impression of its folds. The grassy ground on which he kneels, and the tree above him shine with fragments of ground green glass.