allegory

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It goes to your head
In Budapest, Hungary 1935, Andrew Kner was born into a family whose history in design, bookbinding and publishing dated back to the 18th century. In 1940, the Kner family fled the Nazi regime in Hungary and landed in Chicago, Illinois. Kner displayed an early interest in graphic design and matriculated at Yale University, where he...
Shows a painter sitting and painting in a studio in a shape of a cartouche
Designing a Painter
The image of the painter in his studio is a popular and common visual theme from the early modern period to the present. This particular cartouche, designed by Jacques de Lajoüe, shows a painter with the tools of his trade arranged in the form of a cartouche (a type of an ornamental frame). With the...
What Do the French Aristocracy and the Couturier Valentino Garavani Have in Common?
The purchase in 1995 of the château de Wideville outside of Paris by the Italian couturier Valentino Garavani, evokes an ironic mixture of art history and the contemporary obsession with fashion and fashionistas. What has become the latest destination for a fashion shoot and a fashion museum was once an elegant country villa built by...
Design for a folding screen panel with putti and a herm
Screening the Rococo
This is a design for a panel for a folding screen by the prolific French painter, designer and academician François Boucher. Titled, “The Triumph of Priapus,” it was etched and engraved as part of a suite of folding screen designs. This publication, which was titled Nouveaux Morceaux pour des paravents, included four other designs titled,...
Design for an ewer featuring foliate scrolls and miniature nymphs
An Extravagant Ewer: Jean-Charles Delafosse’s Greek Style
This is a design for an ewer by the Parisian architect, designer, decorator and print maker, Jean-Charles Delafosse (1734-91). Delafosse engaged in diverse artistic productions producing urban planning proposals, architectural plans, furniture designs as well as drawings of ruin capriccios and allegorical and ornamental prints. His designs were widely circulated across France, England, and Germany...
Drawing showing female personification of Truth and Fame on a spandrel
Between Fame and Truth
This drawing is a design for a spandrel, the roughly triangular space between the left or right exterior curve of an arch, by the French academician and painter François Boucher.  The drawing is executed with black chalk, pen, brown ink and wash and represents the personification of truth and fame honoring Louis XV. In the...
For Liberty, Equality, and the Metric System
The infamous Bastille prison was demolished in 1789, in the first year of the French Revolution, an event that had great political as well as artistic consequences. This pen and wash drawing is a design for a monument intended for the Place de la Bastille following the destruction of the prison. The design has been...
Elevation drawing of an opulent bedroom in the Hotel de Soubise, Paris
A Princely Bedroom
The Hôtel de Soubise is a familiar sight for many researchers of French history. Located at 60 rue des Francs-Bourgeois in the 3rd Arrondissement, the building is now used as one of the main branches of the French National Archives. This drawing after the French architect Germain Boffrand  (1667- 1754) shows an elevation of the...