Young Gentleman of Brabant with a Lute in 1588, Jefferys Costume Plate, 1757

An original antique print, a copper engraving colored by hand, lettered "Habit of a Young Gentleman of Brabant, in 1588." A young man in a gray cap and a small ruff stands facing the viewer playing a lute, its pink body held against his chest and its neck angled up toward the viewer's left. His doublet and full trunk hose are yellow, the hose banded with brown stripes, and his sleeves are puffed with striped rolls at the shoulder. Yellow hose cover his thighs above white stockings tied at the knee with purple ribbons, and he wears tan shoes. A long engraved shadow stretches away to the viewer's left.

The English title is engraved in script beneath the image: "Habit of a Young Gentleman of Brabant, in 1588." Below it is the French caption "Jeun Gentilhomme Brabancon." (in English, "Young gentleman of Brabant"), and the plate number 146 is engraved at lower right. "Jeun" and "Brabancon" are engraved without the modern spellings. No engraver or designer is named on the plate.

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 figures from the Low Countries in the volume. Brabant was a duchy of the southern Low Countries whose lands now lie in Belgium and the southern Netherlands. The year in the English title is the date of the costume shown, not of the print, which was published in 1757.

Framed with a generous mat, it makes a crisp accent for a dressing room, a study or a hallway.

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