Le Mariage (The Mariage from, the Vie des Satyres)

Claude Gillot mocked the sanctity of marriage with this pastoral scene, part of a curious series on the life of satyrs. The text beneath describes the rite as a “Sad feast! in which love finds its entombment.” Apart from the oversized reading glasses on the presiding priest, the participants are surprisingly well behaved and straitlaced, considering the mythological creatures’ legendary appetite for lust. Indeed, the print connoisseur and dealer Pierre-Jean Mariette found the iconography of this group of Gillot’s prints particularly innovative.