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La Galerie du Palais ca. 1638
etching on laid paper; 253 x 318 mm (10 x 12 1/2 inches)
Robert-Dumesnil 1267
WATERMARK
grapes with countermark AR in fleur-de-lis cartouche
Bosse may have trained in Paris with Melchior Tavernier, who published the artist's earliest
datable works in 1622, a set of four landscapes after Matthäus Merian. Bosse settled in Paris in 1632 where he produced a vast number of prints, most showing figures in contemporary
dress. Even his biblical subjects and traditional themes are treated as genre subjects,
effectively turning them into commentaries on the society of his own day.
The Galerie du Palais de Justice in the Île de la Cité was the most important commercial
shopping space in the city during the seventeenth century and was satirized by the playwright
Corneille in his comedy La Galerie du Palais of 1632. Here the well-to-do and powerful went
to attend to business, socialize, and buy fashionable luxury goods from the several hundred
merchants selling domestic and foreign wares ranging from haberdashery and gloves to
books and goldsmiths' work. Bosse’s etching shows a predominantly young and lavishly
attired crowd of Parisians at the Galerie which he describes in text below the image: Tout ce
que l'Art humain a jamais inventé/Pour mieux charmet les sens par la galanterie/Et tout ce qu'ont d’appas
la Grace et la beauté/Se descouvre a nos yeux dans cette Gallerie [...]
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