Artwork story
About Landscape containing fifteen silhouettes
The artist and artwork
An unidentified German printmaker made Landscape containing fifteen silhouettes in 1793–1800. The sheet is an etching using crayon technique; its plate measures six and a half by eight and a quarter inches. Two twisting trees flank a rocky monument with a framed profile and urn. A crescent moon, eagle, paired beasts, and coiled forms complete the strange landscape. The German heading announces fifteen secretly hidden silhouettes, making a printed puzzle. The Met does not name the artist, so its ingenuity or politics cannot be assigned to a known maker.
The world around it
The print belongs to a scrapbook of five German hidden-silhouette sheets related to the French Revolution. The Met names Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, their children Louis XVII and Marie Thérèse Charlotte, Robespierre, and Catherine the Great among this landscape's subjects. A related sheet followed the French occupation of Frankfurt in 1792 and hid rulers amid wartime uncertainty. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed in 1793; Robespierre followed in 1794. The date spans revolution, Terror, reaction, and war; the maker's political allegiance remains undocumented.
A detail to notice
At first the print resembles an orderly memorial: a white profile sits inside a dark oval above a stone pile, with two heraldic-looking beasts below. Then faces emerge from the negative spaces and outer contours of trunks, branches, rocks, animals, and ground. The Met records that an additional paper accompanied the print and indicated where the hidden portraits could be found. The sheet itself advertises an explanation available from Johann Jacob Müller in Hanau. Moon, eagle, urn, shields, animals, and central portrait distract the eye while fifteen other likenesses wait in the scenery. Political recognition becomes a game of patient looking. The work asks viewers to seek authority literally in the landscape, and to wonder which faces they missed.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is album; print made in Etching, crayon technique and held in the Drawings and Prints department.
Recorded dimensions include Plate: 6 1/2 × 8 1/4 in. (16.5 × 21 cm); Sheet: 7 5/8 × 9 1/4 in. (19.3 × 23.5 cm).
Subject terms include Kings, Queens, Mythical Creatures, Lions, and Snakes. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Mary Martin Fund, 2017.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-23.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
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