Claude Mellan’s virtuoso engraving of St. Theresa, made without crosshatching.

Claude Mellan. S. Theresa Carmeli Christiani Regina. Theresae Reginae suae Christianissimae. Cl. Melan Gall[us] D. D. [Paris]: “C. Mellan pin. et f. 1661.” [45.1 x 29.7 cm], [1] f. engraving. Narrow margins, remnants of mounting on verso, a few very minor stains.

Rare, quite large engraving (1661) by Claude Mellan (1598-1688) depicting the Carmelite nun St. Teresa of Ávila (1515-82) in her cell kneeling in prayer before a crucifix. The print is a tour de force of the engraver’s art: Mellan rejects the typical syntax of cross-hatching, instead relying on parallel lines that swell and taper but do not overlap.

Mellan dedicated the print to Maria Theresa of Austria, i.e., Marie-Thérèse d’Espagne (1638-83), who was Queen of France from 1660 to 1683 as the wife of King Louis XIV. The Queen shared a name with St. Teresa, was her compatriot, and was a supporter of the Carmelites. After returning from Rome in 1636-37, Mellan was appointed as the Graveur du Roi, a prestigious royal appointment that granted him official lodgings within the Louvre. With this engraving he no doubt wished to curry favor with the new Queen.

Inscriptions on the walls of Teresa’s cell are “Misericordias Domini in Aeternum Cantabo” (Psalm 88:2 [Vulgate]; “The mercies of the Lord I will sing for ever” [Douay-Rheims]) and Teresa’s motto “Aut Pati Aut Mori” (“Either to suffer or to die”).

Born in Abbeville, Mellan worked briefly in Paris before departing for Rome in 1624 where he studied under Francesco Villamena and Simon Vouet, first specializing in reproductive works by Vouet, Pietro da Cortona, Gianlorenzo Bernini, and others. Mellan was in Paris by 1637 where he developed a style of engraving that increasingly rejected the common syntax of crosshatching in favor of a novel method that (brilliantly) favored parallel lines modulated in thickness to create images unlike anything created before.

This is the second and only acquirable state of two, with the first being avant la lettre.

I locate U.S. examples at the Metropolitan Museum and Harvard Art Museums (Fogg).

*Maxime Préaud, Inventaire du Fonds Français, Bibliothèque Nationale, Département des Estampes, Graveurs du XVIIe siècle, Claude Mellan, no. 118; A. de Montaiglon, Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre de Claude Mellan, no. 105; M. Préaud and B. Brejon de Lavergnée, eds., L’oeil d’or: Claude Mellan, 1598-1688, p. 100; L. R. Metcalfe, “Claude Mellan (1598-1688),” The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, vol. 5 (1915), pp. 259-93.