1143 - Martinet, “Ceres”, goddess with bundle of corn ears, waterside landscape, mythological print, Paris

Martinet, “Ceres”, goddess with bundle of corn ears, waterside landscape, mythological print, Paris Copper engraving/paper, unsigned, inscribed below in the plate “a Paris” and “Chez Martinet”, mythological scene, on the right Ceres in a long robe with flowers in her hair and a bundle of corn ears in her arm, turned with outstretched hand towards the reclining woman in the foreground, probably the spring nymph Arethusa, with cloth, overturned vessel and reeds on the bank of a body of water, landscape with deciduous trees and hills, probably late 18th century, image field within an engraved frame architecture with bead moulding, drapery and flower garlands, below a text field with French verses in two columns of four lines each, good condition commensurate with age, two small wormholes at the bottom of the text field, slightly stained, horizontal crease across the entire sheet, image 21x15 cm (HxW), passe-partout, behind glass, framed, frame bumped, overall 34x26 cm (HxW) Ceres is the Roman goddess of agriculture and the harvest and corresponds to the Greek Demeter; a wreath of corn ears and a sheaf of corn are among her fixed attributes. According to the myth, Pluto abducted her daughter Proserpina to the underworld. In the fifth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses she learns from the spring nymph Arethusa that Proserpina has become ruler of the realm of shades as Pluto's consort. The scene was among the pictorial subjects of French book illustration of the 18th century, for instance in Banier's edition of the Metamorphoses with copper engravings after Moreau le Jeune. Engravers and publishers worked in Paris under the name Martinet: François-Nicolas Martinet (1731 to circa 1800) was engraver to the royal cabinet and created over a thousand bird plates for Buffon's natural history, his son Aaron Martinet (1762 to 1841) became a print dealer in Paris.