Merchant's Wife of Paris in 1640, Hand Colored Jefferys Costume Plate, 1757

An original antique print, a copper engraving colored by hand, lettered "Habit of a Merchant's Wife of Paris, in 1640." A young woman faces the viewer, her hair cut in a short rounded style, with a red ribbon at her throat and a broad white collar open on the shoulders. Her dark slate blue overgown has full puffed sleeves and is gathered up in heavy folds at the hips, and the stomacher at the front is banded in gold. Beneath it a gray skirt is trimmed with rows of yellow braid running along the hem and up the front. White cuffs show at her wrists, both hands are held low, and yellow shoes peep from under the hem.

Two lines of lettering run below the figure. The English title, in a flowing script, reads "Habit of a Merchant's Wife of Paris, in 1640." The French caption beneath it reads "Merchandé du Paris.", meaning "Merchant woman of Paris", and the number 137 is engraved at lower right. The plate carries no engraver or designer credit.

This is a plate from Volume II of A Collection of the Dresses of Different Nations, Antient and Modern, published in London in 1757 by Thomas Jefferys in the Strand. Its title page announces the figures as taken "After the Designs of Holbein, Vandyke, Hollar, and others," and the book was also titled in French, Recueil des Habillements de Différentes Nations. It falls among the French figures of the volume. The year in the English title is the date of the costume shown, not of the print, which was published in 1757.

It can be shown on its own or grouped with neighboring plates from the same nation.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.