This etching went through many states before achieving this quite formal composition.
According to Boitard’s 1842 Le Jardin des Plantes, Description et Moeurs, the first marmosets (ouistitis in French) at the Jardins des Plantes were donated by Alexander von Humboldt, the great Prussian naturalist. Boitard adds that they are: “…très à la mode chez les dames brésiliennes”.
More than a hundred years later, they clearly charmed Suzanne Balkanyi as well.
