From the Frog

Twelve heads, from frog to man.

Work: coloured etchings
Maker: Christian von Mechel after Johann Kaspar Lavater
Date: 1797
Held by: Published Basel, 1797 · Wellcome Collection

Stufenfolge vom Frosch

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

Twelve profiles in a grid, each a little less frog and a little more human, ending in a head that is plainly a man's. The sequence was Johann Kaspar Lavater's, the Zurich pastor whose physiognomy promised to read character from the shape of a face; Christian von Mechel etched and coloured it and published it in Basel in 1797. The idea belongs to its decade and has been abandoned. The sheet survives as a strange and handsome piece of printmaking, delicate green to skin tone. Wellcome Collection.

See it on your wall

The plate, in the room it was made for

From the Frog, printed large and framed — in the consulting room, the study, the library. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

About this reproduction

A reproduction of coloured etchings — Christian von Mechel after Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1797 — from the copy held by Published Basel, 1797 · Wellcome Collection. The source. The work is centuries out of copyright and in the public domain.
Printed faithful to that source scan. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the plate you receive is the plate as it survives.
Printed to order on EMA matte art paper, 200gsm. Framed editions sit in a box frame under acrylic, with no mount.
Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the engraver’s, not ours.
Ships in 5–10 business days.
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our plates cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the engraver’s hand is visible — the linework, the tonal work, the lettering — on a matte sheet that shows every line without glare.

From the same hand