Friezes after Giulio Romano, in Palazzo del Te
The production of these prints was a true sibling affair. During his artistic studies in Italy in the early 1660s, Antoine Bouzonnet Stella drew copies of Giulio Romano’s stucco frieze at the Palazzo del Te in Mantua. After his return to Paris, Antoine shared the drawings with his sister Antoinette, who reproduced them in a series of twenty-four etchings. In 1675, their older sister Claudine published the etchings under commission from Jean Baptiste Colbert, the superintendent of Royal Buildings, Arts, and Manufactories for Louis XIV. As an allegory of Claudine’s leadership of her family workshop and artistic instruction of her sisters, the dedication page illustrates Bellona, the Roman goddess of war, watching over two women seated atop the central cartouche.
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