88 - Carlo Lasinio (1759–1838)

Carlo Lasinio (1759–1838) Portrait of Édouard Dagoty, inventor of color engraving. 1783. Black-and-white engraving after Johann Julius, known as Ernst Heinsius (or Hubert Drouais). 425 x 498 [441 x 523 mm]. Color print. Very fine print on laid paper. Scattered small foxing spots. Small red gouache stain on the mount. Short tear along the right edge. Narrow margins. Formerly in the Defer-Dumesnil collection (Lugt 739). AABM stamp (Lugt 3075). Here, Lasinio portrays his mentor and friend, Édouard Gautier-Dagoty. Like him, Lasinio experimented with color engraving techniques in the “maière noire” style and taught engraving for over fifty years at the Academy of Florence. Like the Gautier-Dagoty family, he contributed to the rise and development of the mezzotint in color by producing numerous plates, following in the footsteps of Jakob Christoph Le Blon, who had laid the groundwork for this technique in London in the 1720s and 1730s, under the influence of Newton’s research on optics. The original painting was part of the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orléans, from which it disappeared along with more than 300 other works during the looting of June 1940. It is still being sought today (No. 287 on the list of missing works, available online on the Orléans Museums website, with the following comment: “Attributed to Heinsius in Oulmont’s 1913 monograph, the painting is, on the contrary, attributed by Paul Fourché to Hubert Drouais.”)