Ceres

Aquatint and etching, printed in sepia ink, 1789.

From the series: A collection of prints, after the sketches and drawings of the late celebrated Giovanni Battista Cipriani published in London by John & Josiah Boydell.

The series consists of fifty-plate series of facsimile prints of Cipriani's drawings 'engraved by Mr. Richard Earlom' includes seven engraved by Maria Catharina Prestel, Bartolozzi, Kirk and Legat.. A letterpress contents page of the same sheet size, kept under Earlom's name with the majority of the series, gives titles and the series publication date of September 1st, 1789.

Maria Katharina Prestel (22 July 1747 – 16 March 1794) born Maria Katharina Höll, was an engraver and painter from Nuremberg, and active in London. Prestel, daughter of Maria and Thomas Höll, was born in Nuremberg where she became a pupil of Johann Gottlieb Prestel. She married Prestel in 1769 but the couple separated in 1786, at which point she moved to London with her daughter Ursula Magdalena Prestel. There she worked for John Boydell making aquatints. Her painting Gypsies on a Common was included in the 1905 book Women Painters of the World. Prestel's career in London was quite successful and by the time of her death in 1794, she had produced more than seventy three engraving plates after works by German, Italian, and Dutch artists. She was celebrated for her large aquatint landscape prints, through which she skillfully replicated subtle details of romanticized landscape paintings. Prestel died in Greater London.

Giovanni Battista Cipriani, (1727-1785) was a Florentine decorative painter and designer, active mainly in England. In 1755 he was brought to London by the architect Sir William Chambers and the sculptor Joseph Wilton, who had met him in Rome. He was employed in the decoration of many public buildings and private houses and in some cases designed such architectural details as plasterwork, woodwork, and stonecarving. Good examples of his paintings are at Somerset House (where he worked for Chambers) and in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (a series originally executed for Lansdowne House, London). He was also active as a teacher at the Royal Academy (he was a foundation member in 1768 and designed its diploma), and his numerous decorative designs (many engraved by Bartolozzi, his friend since student days) had wide influence. Cipriani's work is accomplished rather than inspired, but he was, in the words of Sir Ellis Waterhouse, 'one of the great backroom figures of the Neoclassic style in England'.