Pierre Brebiette (mantes 1598 - Paris 1650), Cygnus (1655)

PIERRE BREBIETTE (Mantes-la-Jolie 1598 - Paris 1650)
Cygnus
1655
Etching on laid paper
Plate: 26 x 18.5 cm
Sheet: 31 x 22 cm
Signed on the stone: Brebiette inve
IFF 269

Titled Cygnus, this etching is in fact a compilation of figures from Ovid's Metamorphoses: the weeping trees, the Heliades, the inconsolable sisters of Phaethon transformed into poplars; then, with the legs of a man but the body of a swan, the eponymous Cygnus, son of Neptune and also a Trojan almost killed by Achilles, but turned into a swan before dying; on the left in the foreground, a very relaxed Minotaur; and in the centre, a young man leaning against a rock, either dying or already dead. This moving figure has never been definitively identified; some identify him as Phaeton, but to me, he evokes Narcissus. Regardless, this plate from Michel de Marolles' Tableaux du Temple de Muses (1665) is one of the finest Ovidian compositions in French art. This etching by Pierre Brebiette is very rare; other copies can be found at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig.