Musées de Langres – Maison des Lumières Denis Diderot – Musée d'Art et d'Histoire

Little is known about the life of Jean Duvet, a silversmith active in Langres and Dijon. However, Duvet was one of the first to apply burin techniques to engravings. Some seventy odd prints are attributed to him today.

Although Duvet had seen Italian engravings by Mantegna, Primaticcio, Rosso and Raphael, he showed little interest in perspective. His compositions were initially comparatively light and airy but became denser and more dramatic over time. He developed a deeply original style. The saturated space, and overlapping, contorted bodies, lend great expressive intensity to his work.

Duvet’s cycle of engravings on the Book of Revelation is one of his major achievements. It follows in the footsteps of Albrecht Dürer’s (1471–1528) illustrations of the last book of the New Testament in his 1498 Apocalypse. However, Duvet took a rather unusual approach: his engravings interpret rather than illustrate the Book of Revelation, and deviate somewhat from the order of its chapters. Duvet started on his twenty-three engravings circa 1546. They were published in Lyon in 1561, probably after his death.