Magny en habit de Vieillard, dansant dans l'Opera de Thésée

Etching and engraving with a design for a costume for Magny, wearing an old man's garb at the 'Opera de Thésée', created by Jean I Berain and published by Mariette. Entrusted with drawings for costumes, stage sets, and royal ceremonies at the 'Academie Royale de la Musique' since 1680, Berain's ingenious creations took acanthus and laurel leaves, palmettes and grotesques, mixing them with dancers, acrobats, monkeys and satyrs, to create his own, imaginative, theatrical world. His designs were multiplied and disseminated by means of engravings, his design motifs and manner objects becoming highly influential in the closing years of the seventeenth century. Like this print, many of his designs were for costumes intended for the performances of the Royal Academy of Music.

The costume is made up of a long-sleeved doublet with slashes on the torso, skirt, shoulders, and sleeves, with a white ruff making up the collar and similarly ruffed, white fabric on the cuffs, over knee breeches tied with large bows that stand on the outer sides of the legs, with fringed edges. A flat-crowned hat with long brin, topped by a bundle of feathers of two kinds, ostrich and heron, covers the head. He dances, the weight on his left leg, his right foot slightly towards the front, left arm extended to the side, and the right diagonally to the right, holding a wooden cane, under an arched ceiling and in front of an opening that reveals the view of a mountain landscape, behind his left arm.