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Au Moins Soyez Discret (At Least be Discreet)
Augustin de Saint-Aubin (French, 1736–1807)
1789
- Medium
- Etching and engraving on ivory laid paper
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Image: 33.7 × 24.6 cm (13 5/16 × 9 11/16 in.); Plate: 36.5 × 26.4 cm (14 3/8 × 10 7/16 in.); Sheet: 42.6 × 31.8 cm (16 13/16 × 12 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of the Print and Drawing Club
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This portrait and its companion print Depend on My Promises (1926.918) are likely based on sketches of Augustin de Saint-Aubin and his wife in their youth. The prints depict two fashionable young lovers murmuring sweet nothings to each other as daybreak brings their tryst to an end. The figures lean toward each other in their respective oval frames as if to break the barrier separating them before parting. The prints are deliciously ambiguous, for the young man may or may not intend to keep the affair secret. Indeed, the tiny cupids in cameos beneath each frame suggest a less positive interpretation: hers laments that love is blind; while his has plucked a rose, rejoicing in his triumph over virtue.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
