‘La Curiosite Punie’, 1817

Description

Mounted hand coloured etching entitled ‘La Curiosité punie’ (English translation: ‘The Curiosity punished’), designed by , etched by Godisart de Cari, and published by Aaron Martinet in 1817.

‘La Curiosité punie’ consists of a cut-away scene showing both a room interior and the outer corridor beyond a wall and a closed door. A coarse, overweight and unwelcome man spying through a key-hole at a lady in a bath is squirted with water in the eye by her smiling maid.

The maid empties the clyster syringe she was to have applied to her waiting and amused mistress through the door’s keyhole into the eye of the man who recoils in shock.