An etching showing the head of Minerva, after a drawing by Giulio Clovio (RCIN 990453). She is shown facing right in profile and is wearing a heavily decorated helmet and breastplate. With an ink and wash border.

This is a copy of a drawing in George III's collection by the sixteenth-century artist Giulio Clovio. Rather than seeking to emulate the smooth grey chalk of Clovio's drawing, the Princess Royal has translated the complex forms of the original into the idiom of a linear print. Some of the details of the Gorgon's head on Minerva's cuirass, and a battle between a horseman and foot soldiers on her plumed helmet, have been simplified or elided.

Just as the Princess Royal later sought to disguise her drawings as etchings (see RCINs 451174-76), so in this print she has etched her plate in a hatched pattern in order to emulate the regular lines which characterise engraving, the most laborious and skilled of the print-making methods, and one which was thought to require a great deal more strength and energy than other forms. Etching however was particularly suitable for amateurs because of its similarity to drawing. Very little pressure was required, and the etcher was able to sketch freely through the waxy ground upon the plate with an etching needle, as though with a pencil. This print dates from the mid-1780s, when the Princess was receiving tuition in etching from Biagio Rebecca and P.W. Tomkins but It is not known where (nor by whom) the plates were 'bitten' and printed. By the end of the reign there was a small printing press at Frogmore, some elements of which - in an earlier location - could possibly have been used to print the Princesses' etchings.

Catalogue entry adapted from 'George III & Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste', London, 2004