Rêtif de la Bretonne: The Little Godparents (1777): Art, History and Details

Rêtif de la Bretonne: The Little Godparents (1777) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean-Michel the Younger Moreau (French, 1741–1814).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Moreau was a printmaker and book illustrator, known best for his ability to depict fashion, poses, and gestures. Published in Monument du costume physique et morale, a suite of prints portraying the manners and dress of fashionable society at the end of the 1700s, this scene is part of a sequence narrating the pregnancy and birth of a young couple’s first son. Here, a superbly dressed boy and girl exit a mansion toward a waiting coach; behind them, a wet nurse carries their godson, whose gesturing father stands to the side with two footmen.

Object facts

• Title: Rêtif de la Bretonne: The Little Godparents
• Date: 1777
• Creator attribution: Jean-Michel the Younger Moreau (French, 1741–1814)
• Culture: France
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching and engraving
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1980.51

Collection credit

Anne Elizabeth Wilson Memorial Fund

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.